HELMETLESS FOOTBALL LEAGUE TO WEAR VECTOR MOUTHGUARDS WITH ESP CHIP IMPACT SENSING TECHNOLOGY IN 2016
KIRKLAND, Wash. – (May 9, 2016) – i1 Biometrics, a leading sports wearable technology company, announced today it has signed an agreement with the A7FL, the largest full contact, helmetless, tackle football league in the United States. This Spring, members of the league will wear the Vector MouthGuard with ESP Chip Technology, which measures the brain’s linear and rotational accelerations from impacts experienced in practices and games. The Impact Intelligence System— a computerized system that collects an athlete’s impact data — lies at the core of the Vector, monitoring this data.
The Impact Intelligence System technology is being implemented to further bolster collective knowledge pertaining to concussions and prevention — especially among sports-related head injuries that often cause serious, permanent damage. Sports concussions are on a dramatic rise; 1-in-5 high school athletes will sustain one this year, and more than 33% happen during practice. Football has the highest rate of concussion among teenage athletes, with about 11 concussions occurring per 10,000 athletic exposures.
“Concussion management is an area that football is trying to improve in an effort to elevate player safety,” said Jesse Harper, CEO of i1 Biometrics. “The Vector MouthGuard is an important coaching tool for players, trainers, and coaches. We appreciate industry leaders like the A7FL adopting our technology as a way to help remove some of the guesswork involved in head impacts.”
The A7FL is going one step further, utilizing students from the New Jersey Institute of Technology to monitor the Impact Intelligence System, a computerized system that collects an athlete’s impact data. In conjunction with the Vector MouthGuard, this system will provide highly accurate and reliable, real-time data about not only the number of hits but also the exact magnitude, direction, location and time of such impacts so as to help foster better prevention, protection and treatment methods both on and off of the field.
“The value of i1 Biometrics technology is that it goes inside our athletes’ mouth rather than on a helmet or on the body somewhere,” noted Sener Sean Korkusuz, CEO of the A7FL. “We selected i1 Biometrics because the Vector Mouthguard is best suited to the needs of all parties including A7FL athletes, league leadership, and our research partners at NJIT to provide essential data needed to open up a wider discussion on the future of helmeted and non-helmeted sports”
About i1 Biometrics: Headquartered in Kirkland, Wash., i1 Biometrics is a leading information and technology company that has developed the world’s first mouth guard to accurately measure the linear and rotational accelerations of head impacts during sports and training activities. i1 Biometrics’ Vector MouthGuard and ShockBox helmet sensor provide real-time data to anticipate the impacts an athlete is exposed to during gameplay. Leveraging the $14 billion wearable tech industry, i1 Biometrics helps athletes and trainers realize measureable results from performance analytics to shape forward-looking training programs and individualized athlete-conditioning environments in a variety of team and individual contact sports. For more information, visit: www.i1biometrics.com
About A7FL: Headquartered in Boca Raton, FL, the American 7s Football League is the largest full contact, tackle football league in the United States that plays without hard pads or helmets. The goal of the A7FL is to save one of America’s favorite sports by fixing the way players tackle without sacrificing the physicality of the game all football fans love. In the A7FL we have seen the practical elimination of repetitive non-concussive hits such as those that occur with helmet to helmet football. We believe the A7FL platform provides a modern model for the continued existence of football nationally but also the ultimate expansion of American 7s football internationally. The A7FL has now joined forces with the New Jersey Institute of Technology and i1Biometrics Vector technology to study TBI and CTE as it relates to the “concussion” crisis in American football. The objective of the A7FL TBI study is to generate empirical evidence that removing helmets and hard pads reduces concussions and drastically reduces CTE and TBI related injury. For more information, visit: www.A7FL.com
