New Jersey Youth Soccer has partnered with a sports tech firm that specializes in concussion protocol implementation, taking a step towards advancing player safety in youth soccer.
The soccer organization on Tuesday announced a partnership with Headcheck Health, becoming the first statewide soccer association to partner with the Canadian firm. The organization, whose clientele includes Major League Soccer, will provide NJYS with digital software to help implement existing concussion protocols in real-time for use by players, coaches and staff.
“We are excited to partner with Headcheck to expand our commitment to the safety of our athletes,” Evan Dabby, executive director of NJYS, said in a statement. “Our vision is to provide fun and safe soccer experiences at all ages and abilities for the youth soccer community and this partnership is the perfect fit.”
The software will initially be used by members of their Olympic Development Program, or ODP, and will be available to all NJYS teams and players, officials said. The nonprofit organization is affiliated with U.S. Youth Soccer and the U.S. Soccer Federation, and includes more than 100,000 players aged 5 to 19, more than 20,000 coaches, and thousands of volunteers.
This partnership comes as conversations around concussion safety and prevention have evolved from issues exclusive to professional leagues like the NFL and NHL, to conversations that now include all levels of the sports world, including youth athletes.
Harrison Brown, co-founder and chief executive of Headcheck Health, said the company was founded in 2013 to help streamline the implementation of concussion protocols as the topic of concussions exploded. That implementation becomes more pertinent the lower the level of sport.
“Everybody had a knee jerk reaction in the industry, like every single team on the planet came up with a concussion policy listing out exactly what needs to happen, who needs to do it, et cetera, and nobody really thought too much about how those would get implemented,” Brown said.
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“It gets really, really difficult when you get down to these amateur sports organizations where the volunteer parent — like the mom or dad, that’s the coach or the manager for the team — is the one that has to actually execute that policy,” he said.
That’s why there have been pushes for parents or volunteer coaches to be educated on concussion protocols and injury prevention. The goal of the software provided by Headcheck, Brown said, would be to make implementation of an organization’s existing protocols simpler through such technology as mobile phone applications or computer software.
Though the company was founded in 2013, it took three years to create their initial software. By 2016, the organization had its first clients. The group has worked with such sports leagues as Major League Soccer and the Canadian Football League and has also partnered with True Lacrosse and USA Cycling.
Around 2018, the company began shifting its focus from the pro leagues to include working with younger athletes, beginning with athletes from academies or elite level clubs, and eventually reaching youth leagues like NJYS. Earlier this year, Headcheck partnered with the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, which is the state’s high school sports governing body — equivalent to the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association.
“For our company to have a bigger impact, we want to now go downstream to where the masses are, where [there are the] kids that are not going to become professional athletes,” Brown said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a good player or a bad player. You should be afforded proper care from a concussion standpoint, and we want to be the company that develops that.”