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When South Charleston High’s varsity football team takes to the field for the first game of the season Thursday night, they’ll be wearing new, safer helmets that are showing up on football fields across the state.
The new Ridell Axiom helmets, 50 of them, came to the Black Eagles through a partnership between WVU Medicine’s Thomas Foundation, the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, the high school and Riddell, which manufacturers the helmets.
“Protecting young athletes requires more than responding when an injury occurs,” Dr. Javier Cárdenas, chair of Neurology at the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute and a nationally renowned expert in sports neurology, said. “We need to use the best available science, technology and clinical expertise to understand risk and make informed decisions. Providing coaches with meaningful information about head impacts is another important tool in that effort.”
The helmets arrived just in time for their season opener against Nitro. Many of the ones the team used last year were too old to continue using safely.
The new helmets are fitted to each player and come with advanced protection technologies. Head football coach Donnie Mays said the helmets relay real time data to their athletic trainer.
“They get feedback on it before contact and after contact and you can keep reads on each player like that,” Mays said. “It’s a great tool to have and ultimately it leads to player safety at a high level.”
The death of a Boone County 13-year-old in 2024 focused new attention on player safety for football programs across the state.