Hokies sport safer helmets in wake of new rating system

For Hokie football players, practice is a mix of the same hard-hitting drills and a peek at the playbook. But this year, it is all with a new sense of safety. A new helmet safety rating system released in May by Virginia Tech researchers to reduce the risk of head injury, has the entire team sporting safer helmets.

"It's exciting to be able to have a very immediate impact and quickly be able to change helmets to reduce that risk," said Dr. Stefan Duma, Head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.

Like the Hokies, Duma says hundreds of high school, college, and professional programs have made the switch to higher rated helmets, like the Riddell Revolution Speed, because of information that before the study, just was not available.

"We could educate them on why we thought a certain helmet was the best and now that we have the data to back it up it just helps us," said Mike Goforth, Virginia Tech athletic trainer.

While neither Duma, nor Goforth actually expect the new batch of helmets to affect the way teams like the hokies play, they both hope the technology keeps players on the field

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