CHRISTEN FIGUEROA sat on a blue cooler next to the chain link fence, wearing a black T shirt and black shorts. He watched his nephew, 11 year old Christopher Alvarez, whose friends call him Speedy, huddle around Lee Taggart, head coach of the Juniata Thundercats, a Pop Warner team that calls Piccoli Playground home.
When Figueroa was younger, he attended Edison High School, two miles from the playground where his nephew now practices. Figueroa thinks football is a rite of passage, a way to turn boys into men.
By Sept. 18 of last year, researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University had identified CTE in the brain tissue of 131 of 165 deceased individuals who played football either professionally, semi professionally, in college or in high school.
Yet uncles like Figueroa, and the parents of the three dozen or so Thundercats and parents all across the country, drive their children to football camps, practices and games each fall.
Youth football participation has dropped from 3 million in 2010 to 2.19 million in 2015, according to USA Football, but that’s still 2.19 million children participating in a sport that can lead to brain trauma.
Maybe it’s the basic allure of the hitting, or the kind of character parents and former players believe it builds, but football endures.
For some, it’s simply a lesser evil.
Figueroa’s nephew lives in Kensington, on Somerset Street. In 2007, Philadelphia Weekly named the intersection of Kensington Avenue and Somerset the worst drug corner in the city.
“It can be bad over there,” Figueroa said, straight faced. “When he comes here, he’s not there.”
Playing football is much better than getting tangled up in drugs. And, even with the dangers, there are lessons to be learned from participating.
Taggart and his Thundercats co founder, Bryant Paden, are just trying to make it all a little bit smarter.
This past spring, the Thundercats were awarded a grant from Riddell, the football equipment giant, as part of Riddell’s Smarter Football program. The program gives money to football teams for new jerseys, pads and helmets.
The helmets are Riddell’s flagship item; they feature what is called InSite technology. The helmets are lined with digital sensors, covered by padding, which can detect the impact of collisions when players take big blows.
The sensors send information to a device the coaches have on the sideline, notifying them when a player takes a particularly nasty hit to the head. wholesale nfl jerseys It also exports everything to a digital spreadsheet, with aggregated data on each player’s collisions so coaches can track the impact of repeated hits over time.
For Taggart, who played safety at Central High School and Howard University, and most recently studied the effects of concussions on football players while earning a master’s degree in bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, the grant was welcomed news.
Each year since starting the Thundercats program in 2006, Taggart and Paden scoured the internet for grants and sponsorships to help assuage the cost of equipment. They understand Juniata’s makeup: 38.1 percent of families in the neighborhood live in poverty, 12 percent more than Philadelphia as a whole. They try their best not to turn anyone away because of money. In the past, that meant providing old, worn out jerseys and game scuffed helmets.
As Monday’s practice began, a boy arrived at practice wearing a red jersey, the word “Thundercats” scrawled in tattered white block letters on the chest. He carried a white helmet decorated with gray streaks from repeated collisions.
An hour later, the boy was practicing blocking drills with a brand new all black jersey and an InSite helmet.
“What we want is for the safety first approach to really be ingrained in these guys,” Taggart said. “Because it’s what really matters.”
He knows it firsthand from his playing days. There were plenty of big hits. One in particular sticks out to Taggart.
“I’m lucky,” he said, “because I can remember it.”
It was a Friday night, facing off against Edison. For Taggart, it was a statement game. His coach, an old fashioned man who believed in Oklahoma drills and pounding practices, told Taggart and another player that a starting linebacker job was up for grabs. Whoever made the biggest play during the game would earn the spot.
Taggart ran out on the coverage team for the opening kickoff and ran headfirst into the kick returner.
“I knocked the guy half silly, and myself half silly, too,” he said.
As he came off the field, Taggart remembers his coach telling him he’d won the job. His teammates were fired up. And then he saw black, and he felt dizzy. He told the team’s trainers what was going on, but was allowed to re enter the game.
“I didn’t really understand what was happening at the time,” Taggart said. “But later, that was when I realized using my head like that wasn’t going to work.”
