Minnesota HS football team to wear Guardian Caps during games
August 31, 2023 / Athletic Administration • Athletic Leader • Concussions • Football • Player Safety
A Minnesota high school football will be the first in the state—and maybe the country—to play a game while wearing Guardian Caps, a protective shell that goes over helmets.
The Park Cottage Grove head football coach has invested $11,000 over the past three years in Guardian Caps. Each cap costs roughly $70 and every player in the Park Cottage Grove program, from sixth grade all the way up to varsity, wears them during practice.
A recent story from KARE-11 spoke with Coach Fryklund about making the switch to Guardian Caps. Below is an excerpt from the KARE-11 story.
If the Caps look familiar, it might be because you’ve seen the Vikings wear them in practice this month. Just this year, the NFL mandated Guardian Caps for all teams and all players — at all times — during practice.
“To be completely frank, if they didn’t work and they didn’t keep people safer, I really don’t think the NFL would be mandating what they are,” said Fryklund.
The Cap doesn’t prevent concussions, but they do, it seems, lessen the impact on the brain by 33 percent, according to the company.
Park High doesn’t have hard data to prove that, but the science makes sense to those who treat athletes.
“When you think about the way a concussion happens, it’s because your brain is floating inside your skull, and when you get hit or you experience a whiplash, it bounces around inside your skull,” said Mel Haupt, Park football’s trainer. “So, if we can add something on top of it to absorb some of that force, less force is going to get transmitted through the helmet, through your skull, and then into your brain to cause it to move around and slosh around inside.”
That simple science is why Fryklund decided to take team safety to the next level by wearing the Guardian Cap during games.