New sensor helmets protect high school football players in Flagler County

PALM COAST, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - It's the future of football -- increasing safety for players using sensors.

"The helmet has a sensor in it and that sensor detects where is the impact to the head," said Flagler Palm Coast High School athletic trainer.

This is the first season the Flagler Palm Coast High School football team has been using the Riddell InSite helmets with built in technology that tracks each player electronically, monitoring their hits to the head.

“The sensor is located throughout the entire helmet,” Fuentes said.

The trainer then holds a handheld remote during games and practices, which vibrates and rings when it detects high impact contact.

"It'll send an alarm to the monitor that will let me know that this player should be looked at," Fuentes said.

Each position on the field has a specific threshold for hits that are considered too hard, once that threshold is met through the helmet the coach gets an alert right away.

“This is just the ones that we don't catch, cause you never know, you don't catch a back side, then we might want to check him out," said Flagler Palm Coast head football coach Thomas Moody.

The team uses the technology as another set of eyes and ears on the field, in addition to witnessing hard hits themselves --  Moody says it's also a good teaching tool for players that have repeated detection of high impact contact.

“We kind of tell them, we don't teach to lead with your head, it's only to protect in case you have that collision, the more we teach them how to tackle and how to block, the lesser concussions and stuff we're going to have,” Moody said.

Matanzas High School in Flagler County is also using the new helmets, the added technology on each helmet costs the district roughly an extra $110 per helmet.