Above – Dr. Dearing’s comment that “it’s never been about concussions” would have been more believable if he had followed it up with “it’s all about style!” A tip  of the hat to our Twitter follower @morganbaki  for her work with Photoshop. Wow.  It was like watching small town political theatre.  At it’s absolute worst. The FHSAA Board has completely “beclowned” themselves with this.  I don’t think that’s a real word, but I can’t come up with anything better after watching what I just watched. Expert after expert got up and spoke for three minutes.  Sixteen people in all.  Paul McCord started things off citing data he had collected over the last year.  Hundreds of thousands of hours of girls and women’s lacrosse which resulted in .8 concussion per 100,000 hours of playing time. Mindy McCord, D1 coach from JU, spoke.  Mary Hopkins of West Orange High School.  Speaker after speaker got up and presented personal experience, professional experience, provided data and stories.  A gentleman named Marquis Oglen spoke on behalf of Gamebreaker Helmets, the same helmet worn by the girls at Bullis HS in MD.  He admitted that more testing should be done and said his company is working with US Lacrosse.  Obviously, he thinks they are a great idea.  Then his boss got up there.  Mike Juels of Gamebraker Helmets.  Holy Cow, this guy insulted everyone in the room. “Opposition to this is ludicrous.  This is the same thing as when people didn’t want seat belts in cars.”  “US Lacrosse had their chance to fix the game and they failed.”  Wow.  Now we can go spend $200,000 on this guy’s product thanks to FHSAA.  Juels is a walking PR nightmare for GameBreaker Helmets. The most compelling testimony of the day came from Dr. Richard Hinton.  Dr. Richard Hinton is the team physician of the Baltimore Ravens and is a member of the US Lacrosse Sports Science Committee.  He may be one of the smartest people I have ever heard speak.  In fact, I feel a little smarter today now that I have heard this man speak.  If you really wanted to know if helmets for girls is a good idea or not, this is the guy you would ask. He gave the science behind the helmet debate as well and challenge the psychology of the FHSAA decision.  He gave irrefutable evidence that the soft helmet will not prevent concussions.  The US Lacrosse representatives pointed out that US Lacrosse is working to assist in establishing ATSM standards for women’s headgear.  He gift wrapped and handed the FHSAA a great opportunity to say, “Hey, we are rushing into this, let’s just wait and see what comes out of the work US Lacrosse is doing.”  But they didn’t take the opportunity.  In fact, FHSAA’s Leonard Ireland stated that standardized testing is not the “end all.” Again, pointing out that knee jerk responses trump science, data, and testing in the world of the FHSAA. “Standards Shmandards, we’ll do what feels right.”  He compared this to an injury that occurred when an athlete dove off of the starting blocks into the shallow end of a swimming pool during an FHSAA swim meet years ago and suffered a horrible injury.  At the time there were studies being done about possibly mandating that swimmers only go off of blocks into the deep end of the pool.  That case ended up costing FHSAA big money even though they were following the current standards of the day.  A glimpse into the actual motivation of doing “something.” Even if it’s stupid. Dr. Roger Dearing at one point had heard so much evidence and expert testimony that the helmets could pose a threat to health and safety that he had to address it.  So many experts and parents testified to the way goalies, who wear helmets, are aggressively attacked when they come out of the crease.  There is no respect for the “sphere” around a goalies head due to the fact she has a helmet.  The fear is that this aggression will be afforded to all helmeted players out there.  It’s a real and honest concern.  Dearing wanted it to be acknowledged that the board is not “trying to hurt girls.”  So I guess that is the standard.  Dr. Dearing, it’s on recored here at FLN.  You are not outwardly trying to cause further injury to the young female athletes who play FHSAA lacrosse.  You very well may be causing more injury with this mandate and you have had multiple experts warning you but we do acknowledge, it’s not your stated goal. Dearing then made the ludicrous claim that this hasn’t ever been all about concussions but “overall safety.”  Dr. Hinton pointed out, correctly, “if you mandate this everyone in this room knows that a large number of your constituents will assume it’s mandated because it will prevent concussion and we know that’s not true.”  In fact, the FHSAA’s own press release on the helmet issue talks about concussions (they won’t help Payday Loan), facial lacerations (they won’t help), and “injuries that can cause life changing consequences” (what the heck???) How many of those have we had in girls lacrosse that were not concussions but could have been prevented with a soft helmet. At the end of an hour’s worth of testimony Dr. Roger Dearing announced that the motion before the board was really just to “clarify” whether they would mandate the hard helmet like the boys wear or the soft helmet.  I didn’t even know that was a debate.   At this point one board member actually asked if it was appropriate to make a motion to delay the mandate until at least November when ATSM standards for a helmet maybe available.  She was told that is not appropriate.  At this point Frank Prendergas, the A.D. at Lake Highland Prep and a new member of the board, challenged the board.  He stated that if this is really all about safety then they should amend the motion to say in addition to helmets all coaches and refs should be US Lacrosse Certified.  This brought some cheers from the crowd whose testimony had just been ignored for over an hour.  This was a clear “put your money where your mouth is” challenge from a guy who is really too smart, sharp, and honest to be spending time with the rest of this board.  The portion of his amendment to certify coaches was stripped out on a  legal concern, but the certification of all referees was added and the vote was taken.  Again, be clear, this was not a vote whether or not to wear helmets.  This was a vote on “clarify that the helmet will be the soft helmet as approved for optional use by US Lacrosse and require that all game officials be US Lacrosse certified by the 2015 FHSAA season.  And it passed 9-6. They did decide to visit the matter again in November.  Don’t get excited.  There is zero chance of repeal.  They will just revisit the helmet certification process and if standards are established by that time then they will mandate that the helmet meet whatever those standards are.  A audible chuckle arose from the room when Dr. Roger Dearing proclaimed that many different manufacturers are already designing helmets to meet the standards (which aren’t yet established.) Our take aways from the meeting; 1 – The fix was in.  There was never any chance of getting this repealed, the “good old boys” on the board were never going to allow a motion for repeal come to the floor. 2 – Almost all board members who spoke today began their comments with an admission that they “know nothing about lacrosse, but I know about safety.” Ha Ha. 3 – Dr. Richard Hinton is a very impressive person and as soon as we can transcribe his comments and get them posted I encourage you to read them.  All of the folks from US Lacrosse who attended were very sharp and gave me the feeling that we have some very good people looking out for our sport at US Lacrosse. 4 – The Board was too gutless to “go backwards on a safety issue once they have already passed something. ”  This was admitted by two board members. 5- One board member actually said there is pressure to “go somewhere on safety” which I believe was meant as “we need to do something, even if it makes zero sense. 6 – Paul McCord has a Super Bowl Ring. 7 – Gamebreaker Helmets sent the wrong guy to this thing.  They should have let Marquis come by himself. 8- The Helmet thing is going to be a debacle as schools try to get the proper helmets in time for the season without any standard available at this time.  Once the standard comes out it will be too late to manufacture and order helmets that meet the standards.  Dr. Dearing is kidding himself that there is time to pull this off. 9 – The shortage of officials may be worse this year.  There are a ton of refs to get certified, many who have resisted the certification in the past.  Its gonna hurt, but this is the only positive thing to come out of the day.  So we’ll call this a “growing pain.” 10 – There was no clarity as to weather the boys officials will need to be certified also. 11- My most important take away from the day is that I hope all of the players out there know that there are a ton of really great coaches, parents, and officials that are truly passionate about you and your sport.  It was really awesome to see these folks get up there and do their three minutes on behalf of all the girls out there who are going to be affected by this.  It was frustrating and painful to see that frustration on the faces of these folks who are not there to just cover their behinds but to really do what is right.