Story by Morgan Pemberton
MADISON, W.Va. — Guardian caps are becoming the main topic of discussion in West Virginia since Madison Middle School football player Cohen Craddock died after suffering a head injury in practice last month.
These caps are put on football helmets in order to increase the layer of protection for the players and minimize head injuries. And after doing some research on Guardian Caps, Ryan Craddock, Cohen’s father, is pushing for the caps to become a regular part of the uniform that players have to wear.
“Statistically just the concussions that we believe that it has prevented. And the added protection is there, I just think this is a great product,” Craddock said recently on MetroNews “Talkline.”
Cohen Craddock fell to the ground and struck his head during football practice. He never regained consciousness.
State Senator Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, is calling for the state to mandate and pay for the caps for school and youth players.
“I think we’ve gotten to the point where we ought to be mandating the use of these (Guardian Caps) to try to protect, especially the long-term chronic effect of head injury,” Stuart said last week.
The bill that Stuart plans to propose will be named after Craddock.
“No state yet has mandated the use those (Guardian Caps) in youth sport,” Stuart said. “I’m going to introduce a bill this year to both fund it and require it in youth sports, at least for practice.”
Erin Hanson, co-founder of The Guardian Cap said that while the cap can provide extra protection, there would have been no way of knowing if the cap could have helped in this situation.
“There are definitive benefits to make it safer, you know my concern was, after the tragic death of Cohen, that in some way shape or form his dad would feel like this could have been preventable with a Guardian Cap and that’s just not the case,” Hanson said recently on “Talkline.”
Craddock acknowledged that while he knew that wearing the Guardian Caps was not a guarantee of complete protection, it could have made a small difference.
“I understand that standpoint, I mean there is nothing guaranteed, we all know and understand that. I just think an added layer of protection would have been a different outcome for Cohen, as many other kids,” Craddock said.
Hanson said that there are still the possibilities of injuries relating to football that could still happen regardless of wearing the cap.
“There’s no piece of equipment that can prevent tragedies like that from happening, I mean, you can have a Guardian Cap on your helmet and get hit in the chest and concuss or two players could be wearing them and hit face mask to face mask and still be injured,” Hanson said.
Hanson talked about a study regarding the effectiveness of the caps where researchers used a small focus group of players, causing them to find that the caps made no difference in relation to football injuries.
“I think there are limitations to lab studies, I know one that gets quoted really often to us is one from Las Vegas study that used seven players, so those sample sizes are so low that the researchers have to conclude that it did not make a statistical significance.” Hanson said.
She went on to say that at the end of the study, researchers said it would have been a different outcome if there focus group was larger.
Despite some research saying that the caps did not prove helpful in reducing injuries, Hanson believes that having more of them in West Virginia.