Impact Sensor Maker i1 Biometrics Providing Major Funding For MomsTEAM Institute’s SmartTeams™ Pilot Program
100 Vector Impact Sensing Mouth Guards Donated To Grand Prairie, TX Youth Football Program
Kirkland, Washington: i1 Biometrics, manufacturer of the Vector Impact Sensing Mouthguard and Shockbox Helmet Sensor, is providing underwriting for MomsTEAM Youth Sports Safety Institute, a leading youth sports health and safety think tank and watchdog group, for a pilot test of MomsTEAM’s innovative SmartTeam™ | UNICEF International Safeguards for Children in Sports by the Grand Prairie, TX youth football and cheer program.
In addition to helping to fund the SmartTeams™ initiative, i1 Biometrics is also equipping 100 players with Vector mouth guards, which provide an immediate wireless transmission to a Smartphone that the player has experienced a head impact that could result in a concussion.
Modeled on the community-centric approach to improving youth sports safety highlighted in MomsTEAM’s PBS documentary, "The Smartest Team: Making High School Football Safer", which featured an earlier version of i1’s impact sensing mouth guard, the SmartTeams™ program expands on the Six Pillar™ approach to sports injury and concussion risk management which MomsTEAM used in 2012 to help a high school football program in rural Oklahoma drastically reduce its concussion rate and improve the identification and management of concussions when they occurred.
The SmartTeams™ pilot project in Grand Prairie is also be the first U.S. program to implement the 2014 International Safeguards for Children in Sport, a global sports safety initiative spearheaded by UNICEF UK, now being tested by a select group of 40 “pioneer organizations” around the world, including MomsTEAM who is a UNICEF coalition member.
When the program rolls out nationally in 2016, SmartTeam™ status will be awarded to youth sports organizations which have demonstrated a commitment to minimizing the risk of injury to young athletes by taking a holistic approach to youth sports safety which addresses not just a child’s physical safety, but emotional, psychological and sexual safety as well.
By following a comprehensive set of health and safety best practices, providing safety-conscious sports parents a level of assurance that they have made health and safety an important priority, not to be sacrificed at the altar of team or individual success.
“i1 Biometrics is pleased to provide continuing financial support of MomsTEAM’s SmartTeams™ program and to equip players in the Grand Prairie program with our Vector mouth guards,” said Jesse Harper, the company’s CEO. “Like the Institute, i1 Biometrics believes in the value of athletics, but knows that youth sports can be made safer. We are convinced that, through the SmartTeams™ program, we have a chance to accomplish a paradigm shift in the way we talk about sports safety in this country, but it is only going to happen if parents demand change at the grassroots level. SmartTeams™ is designed to give them a benchmark against which to measure the commitment of their child’s program to a safer sports experience, to support those programs that measure up, and demand change for those that don’t.”
"The purpose of the SmartTeam pilot program is to demonstrate to parents, coaches, administrators, and health care professionals that there are steps we can take now to make youth sports more transparent, accountable and safer,” said Brooke de Lench, Executive Director of MomsTEAM Youth Sports Safety Institute.
“We are pleased that i1 Biometrics has shown its continuing commitment to improving youth sports safety by once again helping to fund our SmartTeams™ initiative and by giving the Grand Prairie program the chance to test out its Vector mouth guards.”
About i1 Biometrics
Seattle-based i1 Biometrics is the manufacturer of the Vector Mouthguard – which features the company’s proprietary ESP™ Chip Technology and utilizes its Impact Intelligence™ System to gather and disseminate highly-accurate, real-time intracranial impact data – and of the Shockbox Helmet Sensor, both of which provide an immediate wireless transmission to a Smartphone, that the player has experienced a head impact that could result in a concussion.
About MomsTEAM Institute and MomsTEAM.com
Launched in August 2000, MomsTeam.com has earned a reputation over the years as a trusted source of comprehensive, practical, objective youth sports safety and parenting information, widely recognized as one of, if not the, top websites of its kind.
MomsTeam Youth Sports Safety Institute, Inc. is a Massachusetts non-profit corporation formed in November 2013 to continue and expand on MomsTEAM’s fifteen-year mission of providing all youth sports stakeholders with information, best practice checklists, and resources to help keep children, teens, and young adults safe, physically, psychologically, and sexually, while playing sports.
For more information about SmartTeams, visit http://www.momsteaminstitute.org/smartteams%E2%84%A2-0
MEDIA CONTACTS
Alicia Bailey
MomsTeam Institute
781 775-0280
David Gallaher
i1 Biometrics
347-366-1851
