Every public high school football player in Omaha will wear an impact-tracking Riddell helmet this fall, thanks to a donation from a Buffett family charity.
The gift to the city seven high schools included more than 900 Riddell Speedflex helmets equipped with its InSite Impact Response System — the same technology the University of Texas and other football programs are using — to help monitor the severity of on-field collisions. The helmets are embedded with five sensors that transmit alerts to a handheld device on the sideline when an impact or series of impacts exceeds a certain threshold. Though no helmet can diagnose or prevent a concussion, signaling such data to a trainer can precipitate a more careful evaluation.
Though the donation was originally announced as anonymous, Omaha school superintendent Mark Evans subsequently told the World-Herald that the Sherwood Foundation — a Nebraska charity established by Warren Buffett’s daughter Susie — supplied the helmets, which retail for $400 apiece for a total cost of $364,000. Jerry Bexten, the director of education initiatives at the Sherwood Foundation, confirmed the donation in an email and said, “Our motivation was to support the health and safety of the students participating in the high school football program.”
Thank you Sherwood Foundation! https://t.co/zysKCqKYz8 https://t.co/RTbVMO9Wem
— OPS Foundation (@OmahaSchoolsFDN) July 22, 2017
Riddell says its Speedflex helmets use padding materials that help absorb impact energy while the shell and facemask have some flexibility that reduce impact force transfer.
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In recent years, all 50 states have passed varying laws aimed at protecting student-athletes from overexposure to concussions. Nebraska’s Concussion Awareness Act, for instance, was established in 2012 and mandates any player suspected of a concussion to be removed from a game at once and not return to play until receiving written permission from both a medical professional and their parents.