BLACKSBURG, Va. (WDBJ) – For someone who’s never played hockey a day in their life, safety is definitely a must.
It’s even more important for the kids who play this game every day and that’s why Virginia Tech’s Helmet Lab is doing the work to make sure the equipment that your child uses is up to the task of keeping them safe.
“Our program has two objectives,” Helmet Lab Director Steve Rowson said. “The first is to inform people of the relative differences between helmets, but our second goal is really to provide manufacturers a design tool and it’s a tool that allows them to optimize helmet design when they’re making new products so that they could best reduce concussion risk. So our hope is that these ratings help lead to better helmets available for players.”
Helmets from most sports have a system to rate their level up safety on a five star scale.
Hockey helmets had no such system and Virginia Tech’s Helmet Lab was asked to create a new rating system for those helmets.
That system is now used in stores throughout the country and trusted by parents in our hometowns.
“For me the helmet safety and the star ranking system from Virginia Tech was priority number one of how to pick a helmet,” Briana Beach said. “When I went to the store they tried to sell me the most expensive one but we went for the highest rating one.”
You’re probably wondering how they test the helmets.
They do it with a pendulum Impact machine.
“We pull the pendulum arm back and we tested different angles to represent at different speeds,” Grad Student Andrew Calis said. “For these youth tests obviously the players are not moving as fast as speeds as what we would see in like a college level or a high school level so because of that we take the speeds down slightly.”
Charlie Statzer operates CrossCheck Pro shop and has been making sure people have the right equipment to keep them safe on the ice and shared other things to keep an eye out for when buying a helmet.
“The first thing that you should be looking at is the labels on the back of the helmet,” Statzer said. “There’s a label that it signifies when the helmet was manufactured but more important there’s a HECO label on here that tells when that helmet expires. After a period of time those chemicals materials will break down and this is to ensure that your child will be safe in there.”
It is also important to make sure the helmet you buy fits your child
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