WCU, Penn State partner to produce data collecting mouthguards for football players

CULLOWHEE, N.C. — Engineers at Western Carolina University (WCU) are going the extra mile to better protect athletes in contact sports, according to our news partners at WLOS in Asheville.

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Research has already begun that could have far-reaching changes through a partnership between WCU’s Engineering Technology programs, its football team, and Penn State.

WLOS says football and engineering go hand in hand for WCU tight end Clayton Bardall, who is familiar with head impacts in contact sports.

“I had my first somewhat major traumatic brain injury or concussion two years ago. And I felt the effects of it for a very long time,” Bardall said.

The effects were a driving force for the WCU athlete and engineering graduate student to collect data from instrumented mouth guards that record impacts to the head, WLOS reports.

Bardall told WLOS that the data shows him how much strain is put on the player’s brain when they’re hit on the field. He is working with his professor, Martin Tanaka, to create a mouthguard for WCU football players.

“Get your head hit; the mouthguard moves, and we can know how much the brain moves inside the head,” Tanaka told WLOS.

The instrument laced into the mouthguard measures the linear and angular acceleration of the skull.

WLOS reports that in the last season, more than 1,500 head impacts were recorded on 10 of the WCU football players. While none have resulted in a concussion diagnosis, some players have shown some cognitive impairments.

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“One of the interesting things about this study is that we’re not just measuring head impacts; we’re measuring cognitive performance,” Tanaka said.

Penn State then takes the head movement data from WCU to calculate the strain in each tissue element.

“The Penn State portion is looking at brain strain. So, we’re looking at how each of the tissues within the brain stretches. We’re hoping that someday we might be able to correlate functional performance with where the brain injury occurred,” Tanaka said.

Bardall told WLOS he thinks the data they collect will have a big impact on multiple-contact sports.

“They’re working on implementing these mouthguards into professional sports. And I know a lot of schools that have been using these mouthguards or mouthguards similar to this one,” he said. “Keeping players safe and prolonging their lives as long as possible.”

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