Safety is a concern in all sports, but it has taken on added significance in football, particularly at the high school level.

This year, the Illinois High School Association is implementing new rules for high school football practices.

During the preseason, full-contact drills must be limited to once a day during “two-a-days” sessions.

Once the regular season starts, full-contact practice must be no more than 90 minutes over three days during the week. This limit takes effect in August, the first Monday before a game.

“It will affect all football practices, whether it’s Dupo or any other school,” Dupo High School athletic director Jill Puckett said.

“Everyone has to follow it, so everyone’s on the same playing field. I’m sure it will change the practices up a little bit and how they’re run. I think it’s going to change everything, but not just for us, every school will be following those rules.”

For area schools such as Columbia and Waterloo, the new rules really won’t have much of an effect on either team’s practice regimen.

“We’ve been backing off hitting during practices for quite a few years,” Waterloo head football coach Dan Rose said. “We’re trying to save hitting for Friday nights.”

Rose added that he imagines the rules are being implemented to help limit injuries.

Columbia head football coach Scott Horner said his team doesn’t hold too many full-contact practices.

“It doesn’t change anything for us,” Horner said. “We don’t hit that much during the course of the week anyway.”

Although football is bearing the brunt of many national headlines involving safety, every sport has its own dangers.

For example, concussions and other head injuries have become the focal point of player safety. Football is arguably the most full-contact sport. Players  look like they’re gearing up for battle every time they step onto the field.

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland made headlines when he retired this March after one season in the NFL, citing head trauma as a concern.

But concussions happen in every sport. In early July, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Kolton Wong missed a couple games with a concussion. He hit his head after making up a diving catch.

In the NHL, Sidney Crosby missed most of the 2011-12 season because of concussion-like symptoms.

During this year’s NBA playoffs, Golden State Warriors player Klay Thompson suffered a concussion just before the NBA Finals.

Football is adapting to the shift in player safety with new technology and tackling methods.

“With new helmets and no longer being able to face tackle, there’s a lot of efforts being made in football to limit head injuries,” Rose said.

Rose’s three kids are playing youth football this season.

To protect players from head injuries, the Columbia football program is adding new technology to its helmets for the upcoming season.

The varsity team is adding sensors to helmets that measure the impact of hits. By next year, Horner expects the entire program — varsity, JV and freshman — will have these sensors in the helmets.

If a certain player is hit hard enough, an alert will be sent to a handheld device being looked at by an athletic trainer on the sidelines.

“If the particular hit he takes crosses a certain threshold, he will probably need to be taken out of the game and be evaluated right away,” Horner said. “What that does is it prevents a kid from taking a shot.”

This year, the team will have 51 helmets with the technology. Each sensor costs $150.
The Columbia Quarterback Club, Columbia Athletic Boosters, and efforts by the football team are funding the sensors — there is no district money involved.

For the entire team to have sensors, it will cost about  $15,000. They are about halfway to their goal.

“Safety is the number one priority in sports these days, especially concussions,” Horner said. “This isn’t a concussion preventing measure and that’s important to understand as well. It measures hits. It will help get kids off the field quick to keep them from getting hit.”

Dupo, Columbia and Waterloo all follow IHSA protocol regarding player safety.

Trainers are on the sidelines of every game. Each school goes over safety with parents and athletes before each season.

“We do play a collision sport and there is always an opportunity for those things to happen,” Horner said. “The weird thing is, these kinds of things have been going on for years but they haven’t been documented. Now that they’re being documented, more people understand and know.”