The Aroostook Huskies Football Club has been selected by USA Football to be one of the few programs across the United States to participate in its pilot project to attempt to implement better and safer techniques for playing football.
Recognizing that safety is a major concern for players at all levels, the National Football League and USA Football (the national governing body for amateur football in America) have proactively invested considerable time and money in studying the problem of how to preserve the game of football so popular in this country while taking steps to make the game safer for participants. The Head’s Up program is the result of this effort and a first step in this direction.
The Head’s Up program emphasizes three major components: proper equipment fitting, concussion recognition and teaching better, safer tackling techniques that largely take the head and neck out of the collision.
Huskies head coach Stu Wyckoff was sent to a Boston clinic to learn new best practices to bring back to the program and implement. This means that all Aroostook Huskies coaches will incorporate these techniques and all Huskies players will be taught and drilled extensively in the same techniques.
In addition, parents will be presented information in an attempt to enlist their aid in monitoring their children (particularly when it comes to maintaining the integrity of the safety equipment and in recognizing changes in their children that might suggest the presence of concussion).
“It is clear that football needs to evolve if it is going to survive as a game. Players have just gotten so much bigger and stronger and the collisions are so much more violent,” Wyckoff said. “I was glad to see that USA Football was as concerned about safety as we are.”
Anyone with questions regarding the Head’s Up program can visit www.aroostookfootball.org and select the “Contact Us” link on the homepage.
