Photos by The Roanoke Times | File 2011

Brian Sutphin (right), a coach with the Auburn Eagles, a 6- to 8-year-old youth football team from Montgomery County, leads a prayer before the start of a game last fall. Several players wore helmets equipped to measure the force of impacts.

Several helmets used by the Eagles were rigged to gather data on head impacts for a Virginia Tech study.

Dwayne Dickerson, a coach and parent of two players on the Auburn Eagles, encourages team members before a game. The researcher released his data on head impacts before submitting it for publication so coaches could adjust their procedures.

The study

• A small Virginia Tech study recorded the force of head impacts on 7- and 8-year-old boys playing football on a Montgomery County rec league team last fall. The researchers’ goal is to gather enough data to rate youth helmets based on how well they protect a child’s head.

The hits

• Of the 753 hits recorded throughout the season, six were at a level that would be considered a big hit for college players. Also, the biggest hits, and those with the most potential for causing a concussion, occurred not during the team’s eight games, but at practice.

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• Do you think changes need to be made in youth football? Comment on Sarah Bruyn Jones' Med Beat blog
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The smallest youth football players sometimes sustain hits to the head that equate to those seen in elite college athletes.

In a first look at the youngest athletes playing tackle football, a small Virginia Tech study recorded the force of head impacts on 7- and 8-year-old boys playing football on a Montgomery County rec league team last fall.

"I think you could characterize several of the findings as very surprising," said Stefan Duma, the Virginia Tech engineering professor who conducted the study through the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Center for Injury Biomechanics.

Similar research has been conducted for a decade on adults, but as concerns about concussions have grown, the researchers focused on the effects facing the nation's 3.5 million youth players. The researchers' goal is to gather enough data to rate youth helmets based on how well they protect a child's head. Duma released adult helmet ratings last year.

Of the 753 hits recorded throughout the rec team's fall season, six were at a level that would be considered a big hit for college players, according to the findings.

Duma said the data collected invalidate the assumption that a smaller player won't sustain a concussion because he isn't as big or as fast as adult players.

"We have proven that to be false," he said.

Additionally, the biggest hits, and those with the most potential for causing a concussion, occurred not during the team's eight games, but at practice.

"We need to modify the practices," Duma said. "There is no reason to have some of the drills that are happening at the highest hits. †We need to stop running drills where the kids line up and have them run at each other."

For the coach of the seven youth players involved in Duma's study, the results are already leading to changes in how the team will practice next season.

"It was eye-opening," said John Clark, who leads the 7- and 8-year-old Auburn Eagles. "You know, my son was playing. So it kind of makes you rethink, not that I wouldn't let my son play, but possibly the way we conduct practices as coaches."

Duma has zeroed in on that and said it is among the reasons he released the findings prior to having them published in a scientific journal, which would mean delaying telling the public for about eight months.

"Nobody in our group was comfortable sitting on this and missing a whole other season," he said.

Instead, Duma worked with the television journalist Stone Phillips to produce a documentary about the findings. The video was posted online Friday at http://stonephillipsreports.com and will be featured Monday on ABC's "The View."

Duma said he still plans to submit the findings for publication, which will open them up for review by other scientists in the field.

Hits are measured in terms of G-force, or the gravitational force associated with the acceleration of an object relative to a free-fall.

To measure G-force, Duma used the same sensor system that he has placed in the helmets of players at Virginia Tech for the past decade.

He said initially he was concerned whether the study would even work because the sensors only pick up impacts of 10 Gs or greater.

"We found out quickly that wasn't a problem," Duma said.

The strongest hit recorded came in at 100 Gs, and six measured at 80 Gs or higher, he said.

There were differences between the young players and those at the high school and college level.

With the children, the vast majority of hits came in below 40 Gs, with only 5 percent exceeding that force.

The median hit for the Eagles players was 15 Gs.

For college athletes, the typical median hit is about 20 Gs. When the Virginia Tech Hokies take the field wearing Duma's instrumented helmets, any hit above 98 Gs triggers the team's medical staff to check for a possible concussion.

The children also recorded far fewer hits than their adult counterparts. The seven children who wore the instrumented helmets averaged about 100 hits each for the season. In high school, the average football player is hit about 500 times a season. In college, players are hit an average of 1,000 times.

"Obviously, there are a lot fewer hits on average, but we saw a much higher range [of force in the youth] than we would have expected," Duma said.

The results are leading to changes.

During the fall, the Eagles had full-contact hitting at every practice, four times a week.

"That's probably a good start, we're not going to hit four days a week anymore," said Chris Slusher, athletic supervisor for the Montgomery County Parks and Recreation Department, adding that he will share the findings with all New River Valley rec league teams.

Clark, who also coaches the Floyd County High School football team, said he is redesigning practices to include fewer scrimmages and more drills that focus on skills and techniques. He hopes coaches at youth leagues across America will take similar steps.

"We don't necessarily have to make them battering rams throughout practice," Clark said. "We're going to be slowing things down a little bit — keeping these kids safe and teaching the kids the proper technique that they can carry on throughout their life of playing football."

And that famed drill known as the Oklahoma drill, where the linebacker and running back square off, will be a thing of the past in Montgomery County, Slusher said.

"It's a full head-on collision with speed involved," he said.

Even as Slusher and Clark have taken the study results to heart, they are also upbeat about how the game can be improved for youth players throughout the country.

"The game of football is my life and I enjoy it," Clark said. "I don't think this is going to hurt the game. It think this is going to make it better and safer and make for better helmets and changes in practice."

More data will have to be collected before the results can be used to rate the effectiveness of helmets. But that hasn't stopped Slusher from paying attention to the equipment he has for the approximately 140 children who now play in the county's league.

On Monday, the county's helmets will be sent off to be refurbished. Helmets that don't pass inspection will be thrown out, and Slusher has budgeted to replace about 20. Additionally, Duma has set up a fund through the Virginia Tech Foundation to raise money for more research and to purchase helmets. The fall youth study was funded through a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Duma plans to continue working with the Eagles in the upcoming season, and he is developing a study that will follow some of the other age groups in the youth league as well as players in middle school.