Soccer Headgear Essay

History

The invention of soccer headgear dates back to the late twentieth century and the early twenty first century. There was no soccer headgear during the development of the sport soccer. Therefore this would cause many people who played soccer before the invention of headgear, head related injuries, such as concussions and impact injuries, such as fractures, bleeding and lacerations which are caused by oncoming soccer balls, hands or cleats. Concussions date as far back as mankind, happening a lot, just people were not familiar with and did not have the technology to determine what was going on inside of their brain. A concussion is defined as a complex pathophysiological process that affects the brain, typically induced by trauma to

the brain.

It can be caused either by a direct blow to the head, or an indirect blow to the body, causing neurological impairments that may resolve spontaneously. Symptoms usually reflect a functional disturbance to the brain, and may include physical, cognitive, emotional, and maintenance symptoms. It was just 15 years ago that the first headgear was made which was only made for the purpose of protecting people’s heads from concussions. The first headgear was an actual just meant for a goalie, since he was most prone to get hurt the worst. But since the game has begun to grow and get more physical the statistics of people outside of goalies getting concussions has grown innumerably since the game really began to get popular. Soccer helmets were originally derived from football helmets, but because this slowed the player down and caused the headed ball to go into the wrong direction a reconfiguration of soccer helmets had to be made in order to give players the protection, agility and capability of doing everything they did before without helmets, now

with helmets.

Present Technology

The headgear that we have as of right now is fully concussion proof but does work completely.

A study of players shows that off only the 52 players who wore headgear during the season, the unprotected majority of the players in the study were 2.65 times more likely to have been injured: 52.8% of participants who did not use headgear reported being injured, compared to 26.9% of participants who did. Also some studies show that females are more likely than males to get a concussion, and tend to have more symptoms and require more time to recover. Headgear today resembles an enlarged headband, and weighs less than 2 ounces, and covers the forehead, temples and occipital bone in back of the head. The headgear is made of shock-absorbing foam situated between an outer layer of Lycra and an inner layer of sweat-absorbing polypropylene. Lycra is a synthetic fiber known for its great elasticity. It is stronger and more durable than natural rubber while polypropylene is a thermoplastic polymer that is just like plastic but more durable and flexible. The challenges that are facing most scientists and developers of this headgear today, are to be able to protect players from concussions and other head related injuries. Also a new form of protection is a headband that is an alternative to full concussion headgear that is the concussion headband. It has the benefits of being lighter, easier to clean and more stylish while having measurable protection benefits. While still unsure of the

benefits in head-to-ball contact, these concussion headbands have been shown to offer some protection in contact with other players head.

Design Process

There were many different designs of the helmet that we thought about doing. First of all we thought of doing a pen that was voice activated, so that when you talked, it wrote down exactly what you said. Also we came up with a binder that kept all of our pages numbered and a calendar of what and when homework and papers were due. But we ruled these two out because we all played sports and so it probably wouldn't be fun to do. So then we decided to go to football where if you were hit an airbag inflated to protect your head from any injuries. The only problem with this though is that the airbag would have to go back into the helmet and re-inflate it-self. We lastly came to shin guards that are sensitive to the environment around them and had like all around so that when something went through them the shin guard would appear. We decided not to do this because if the sensors did not work during a game it could cause a player serious injury. However we choose to do my idea of a new soccer headgear because it had to do with sports which is what we really wanted. Also it involved new shield type technology and it has sensors. So what we basically did was combine all our other ideas into one idea that tried to express all of them in a certain way.