Contact sport.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Alawsuit blames the brain injury suffered by a Waldport High School quarterback on the age and condition of his football helmet, but no one seems to know what year the helmet was manufactured.

No one can say who wore it before Max Conradt collapsed on the sidelines in October 2001. No one can say how much action the helmet saw in the years before it ended up in a lawyer's office as Exhibit A.

The case exposes gaps that exist in the sy- stem set up to inspect and replace the sport's battered equipment.

All states follow national guidelines for high school sports that require inspections of football helmets and shoulder pads every two years. Only California has a state law ordering the inspections - and the law goes a step further by mandating annual inspections.

A sampling by The Register-Guard shows that high schools throughout Oregon follow the national inspection guidelines, but the degree of accountability varies.

Few high schools appear to keep their own records tracking the use of football equipment - for example, who wore a helmet, when they wore it and what position they played.

Most schools keep copies of records provided by private inspection companies. But those generally show only how many helmets were reconditioned and the cost. Some note the age of a helmet, but none of the companies tracks a helmet's history.

When companies do include a helmet's age, the records indicate that newer helmets are the norm, though older helmets made in the 1980s remain in use at some Oregon schools. Helmets tend to be older in rural and less wealthy school districts.

For example, at Eugene's Sheldon High School, where the football team won its first state championship in 2002, most parents chipped in last summer to buy their sons state-of-the-art $150 helmets. At Chiloquin High School in south-central Oregon, 17 helmets reconditioned before the 2001 season were all made between 1988 and 1994.

Ralph Conradt of Eugene filed a lawsuit last fall alleging that his son's helmet was not properly inspected and that it should have been rejected as too old because it had exceeded its life cycle.

Dick Whittemore, an attorney for the Lincoln County School District, said it is his understanding that the helmet was 20 years old, but no one knows for certain.

The lawsuit, which asks for up to $40 million, names Athletic Repair Service of Canby, the company that certified Max Conradt's helmet for reuse in spring 2000.

Although the helmet appears worn, it contains the necessary biannual sticker saying it was recertified in accordance with national guidelines.

Athletic Repair Service, in turn, is suing the Lincoln County School District, claiming the district should have had helmets inspected every year and should have required physicals for players to disclose any susceptibility to injury.

If the case is not settled out of court, as similar cases often are, it should go to trial in Lincoln County Circuit Court before the end of the year, said Art Johnson, Conradt's attorney.

Because of the lawsuits, Whittemore and school district officials refused to comment about the case other than to say it was a tragedy.

"The team was very well-trained and coached," Whittemore said. "How it happened and why it happened, I'm afraid we don't have all the answers."

Waldport High School Principal Von Taylor said the school had "a number of helmets" in 2001 as old as the one worn by Max Conradt.

The age of a helmet is not necessarily an indication that it needs replacement, say industry officials and health care professionals who have treated football injuries.

They point out that catastrophic injuries occur each year to players wearing new helmets as well as older ones. Football is the ultimate contact sport, and there is an inherent risk in playing it, they say.

"Unfortunately, we live in a world where accidents happen," said Julie Nimmons, the owner of helmet manufacturer Schutt Sports, which bought the company that made the helmet Max Conradt wore. "That's life. But I think for a contact game like football, the equipment does a very good job.

"I think that if you could come up with a helmet that protects against all injuries, you would corner the market. But it won't happen," she said. "And it can't happen if you're going to have a game of collisions."

Record-keeping

There is no way of tracing the history of Max Conradt's helmet because Waldport High School and the Lincoln County School District do not keep such records.

Like most schools, Waldport High simply sends out its helmets to the reconditioning company that wins the school district contract and then gets back a bill.

Some schools go a step further.

"When I was the athletic director at Central Catholic High School, we tracked every helmet we had," said Tom Welter, who was at the Portland school from 1974 to 1994 and now is executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association, which oversees Oregon high school athletics.

"Every helmet had a number. And a helmet worn by an all-league fullback or middle linebacker was sent in again even if it was recertified the previous year," he said.

But the state organization has no authority to impose such a rule on its members, Welter said. "We're an association of schools," he said. "Whatever our schools decide they want to do, we do. I suppose if the members felt there was a need in this area, it's certainly something we'd explore. They're the ones that have the liability."

Referees are instructed to ask coaches before a game if all their players are properly equipped. And they also keep an eye out for helmets that do not have proper recertification stickers.

All coaches should be aware of their inventory, said Brad Hergert, a Portland-area sales representative for Riddell/All-American, a reconditioning arm of top helmet-maker Riddell.

"I preach to coaches that you should inventory your helmets and know that helmet No. 1 is a Riddell VSR-4 and what year it is," he said. "And then go a step further and keep track of what player wore it, how long, and what position he played. But very few football programs do that."

The reason they do not is primarily financial, said Mike Oliver, executive director of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, which sets the testing guidelines for helmet manufacturers and reconditioning companies.

It is expensive to upgrade equipment every year. Most colleges cannot even afford to do that, Oliver said.

Testing standards

The move to inspect football equipment began 35 years ago after a glut of football-related deaths.

The NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations formed NOCSAE to establish testing guidelines in response to 36 football deaths in 1968. The players - including 26 in high school - died from catastrophic injuries such as broken skulls and necks and brain injuries.

In 1978, the NCAA started requiring testing and recertification of helmets at its colleges every two years. The national high school group followed in 1980, requiring members of its state affiliates, such as the Oregon Schools Activities Association, to comply.

The test standard involves mounting a football helmet on a model head and dropping it from different heights and angles to test its durability.

Manufacturers test their helmets as they are produced. Licensed reconditioners, such as Athletic Repair Service, test used helmets to the original standard and repair them if necessary, including replacing worn parts and painting them.

Some football helmet manufacturers put a shelf life on their helmets, but others do not.

Chicago-based Riddell, the largest football helmet manufacturer, has a 10-year shelf life on its helmets. Reconditioners must disassemble helmets once they hit the 10-year mark and send the shell back to schools to show that they have been destroyed.

Schutt Sports has no shelf life for its helmets, said Dean Wolfe, a regional sales manager at Schutt's Litchfield, Ill., headquarters.

"We feel the shell is fine until the parts inside of it need to be replaced or the shell is cracked," Wolfe said.

"Helmets can easily last 12 to 16 years, until the reconditioner determines that it is too cost-prohibitive.

"Just because a helmet is 10 or 12 or 14 years old, does not mean that it's been on the playing field. So a lot of it has to do with how the helmet is used," he said.

But a 20-year-old helmet probably should be retired, Wolfe said. "I would be surprised if the shell wasn't cracked," he said.

The Conradts are suing Athletic Repair Service instead of the helmet manufacturer because Oregon law says product liability civil actions must be brought within eight years of a product's introduction.

Johnson, the Conradts' attorney, says all manufacturers should set an age standard on their football helmets. He also says government should regulate manufacturing and reconditioning of football helmets.

"So many things are not regulated by law, but they're regulated by industry standard. ... (The manufacturers) don't want to set the bar too high," he said.

Most all of the funding for the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment comes from per-helmet licensing fees paid by manufacturers, said Oliver, the executive director. The committee's board includes top executives from Riddell and Schutt Sports.

Cost a factor

Coming up with the money to recertify helmets every two years is a constant struggle for many high schools, with the fund-raising usually taken on by booster clubs. Athletic Repair Service, for example, charges a base price of about $12 a helmet for testing, reconditioning and recertifying.

But with new parts for the interior, along with buffing, polishing and painting, the price per helmet can climb to about $25 a helmet.

Take a school such as South Eugene High, which had 74 helmets recertified by Athletic Repair Service before the 2000 football season for varsity, junior varsity and freshman football, and the total bill comes to $2,068.60.

And if helmets do not pass the test, then the school must buy new helmets, and those run from about $100 to $160.

When Kevin Swift came from Southern California to Gold Beach High School on the Oregon Coast a few years ago to coach football, he said he was surprised that the school did not recertify its helmets every year, as was the law in California.

He told school administrators "you're nuts," he said. "I'm doing it every year, because that's my standard.

"Quite frankly, it needs to be a statewide regulation," Swift said. "I just think, in this day and age of lawyers and lawsuits, with kids running faster and harder, it has to be done every year."

Injuries decline

Industry figures show a significant decline in head injuries as helmet design and technology have improved through the years. Advances include helmet padding pumped with air for custom fitting and computer-designed helmets with better padding made to protect the sides of the head, the area most prone to concussion.

In 1990, for the first time ever, no one died from a direct, catastrophic injury playing football at any level, according to the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, which has commissioned safety research through the years.

Its studies show that between 1964 and 1968, the years right before the committee formed, serious head injuries averaged about 4.25 per every 100,000 players. By 1990, that had dropped to .68 per 100,000 and is now about .44 per 100,000.

But a helmet's age alone is not the only problem, said David Halstead, a biomechanical engineer who runs the Southern Impact Research Center in Knoxville, Tenn. He is considered a leading specialist in the field of football helmets, and his organization has helped establish the national testing guidelines.

"Chances are the helmet had nothing to do with it," Halstead said of Conradt's injury.

He bases that on two things: the exacting standards that helmets must meet during reconditioning and today's rare brain injuries.

Instead, he believes something else is at play: "He probably had many hits before," Halstead said of Conradt. "And he probably didn't tell anybody besides a friend because he wanted to play."

Conradt had complained of headaches during the week leading up to the Oct. 19, 2001, game against Taft High School, said his mother, Ingrid Olson of Yachats. And he was taking aspirin every day, she said.

Kids get hurt wearing even the latest technology in helmets, Halstead said. He cited the case of Will Benton, an Austin, Texas, high school senior who was wearing a brand-new Riddell Revolution last September when he was tackled in a game.

It was not a particularly hard hit, but Benton came to the sidelines and told coaches that he felt "weird," according to news reports of the game. He collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage and died a few days later.

Dr. Robert Cantu, a Concord, Mass., neurosurgeon and medical director for the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research at the University of North Carolina, also believes helmets have little to do with brain injuries in football.

"Helmets do deteriorate over time," he said. "But they are made to take thousands of hits and they are reconditioned back to the same standard. I think it's fair to say that I've personally not been aware of a case where the helmet has been the problem."

But Cantu acknowledged that he had never studied or seen a brain injury in a football player who was wearing a 20-year-old helmet.

He said researchers are studying other theories of how players could sustain debilitating brain injuries.

One theory is that the few players who have suffered serious injuries in the past 25 years all had some sort of genetic predisposition for head injuries and never should have stepped onto a football field, said Cantu, who is also vice president of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment.

Even so, football equipment must be in good working order, and the testing standards and reconditioning provide a level of checks and balances necessary to ensure that, he said.

California example

Brud Soares, 66, has run Continental Athletic Supply in Gridley, Calif., for four decades. He reconditions equipment for high schools and colleges, including several Southern Oregon high schools and a few on the coast. He also has had the University of Oregon and Oregon State University contracts for years.

He works in nine Western states and notices the difference at the high school level when he crosses the California border, he said.

California's law has increased the quality of football helmets and shoulder pads in the state, said Soares, who took over the Lincoln County School District contract in 2001 after outbidding Athletic Repair Service.

"The quality of the gear in the schools is just outstanding now," he said. "It's clean. It's recertified. I think it's helped 100 percent. It made our schools much more aware, much more conscientious. California is as good as it gets."

Though the inspections are more frequent, California does not have a system in place to enforce the law.

"Does somebody go around and check? No," said Jeff Halpern, an assistant commissioner with the California Interscholastic Federation, which oversees California high school athletics. "We don't have time to do that. And I don't think (the law) needs to be enforced. All schools know that if you don't do it, it's suicide. In this day and age of everybody suing at the drop of a hat, you do anything you can to make sure it's done."

The law gets an endorsement from Chris Miller, the former University of Oregon quarterback who played professionally and suffered his share of concussions, which finally ended his career. Miller is now head football coach at South Eugene High School.

"I think it's a great idea," he said. "The kids' safety is No. 1. But if they're going to require us to get 75 helmets recertified, they need to put money in our budget for that."

SPOT CHECK

In response to a Register-Guard records request, 83 high schools out of about 230 statewide provided information on their football equipment inspections program from the past three seasons.

The records showed that inspection companies generally reject helmets that are 20 years old or more, although they occasionally recondition some.

Some examples:

Oldest helmet found: 1979 Bike "Air" helmet sent in for testing by Brookings-Harbor High School before 2000 season and rejected by Riddell/All-American.

Rejected helmets: Five 1982 "Air" helmets from Hood River Valley High School rejected by Riddell/All-American before 2000 season; three 1983 "Air" helmets from Mazama High School in Klamath Falls rejected by Continental Athletic Supply before 2001 season.

Recertified helmets: 12 Bike "Air" helmets made in 1984 were tested and recertified by Riddell/All-American and sent back to La Grande High School before the 2001 season.

FOUR CHOICES

In Oregon, there are four companies licensed by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment that recondition high school football helmets and shoulder pads.

Athletic Repair Service of Canby is the only one located within the state.

The company provides schools with records that show the number of helmets recertified, but not the manufacture date of the helmets.

Example: At North Eugene High School in 2001, the company reconditioned and recertified 47 helmets at a base price of $11 apiece for a total of $517.

Riddell/All-American of San Leandro, Calif., a reconditioning division of Riddell, has two representatives based in Oregon who gather and evaluate football equipment before sending it to San Leandro for reconditioning.

The company lists year and model of helmets recertified and rejected.

Example: At Churchill High School in 2002, the company recertified 55 Athletic Helmet Inc. helmets made between 1993 and 2001 and rejected eight Riddell helmets made in 1993 and 1994.

Continental Athletic Supply, in Gridley, Calif., serves several Southern Oregon high schools and some schools on the coast. Continental has also done the University of Oregon's and Oregon State University's football equipment for years.

The company lists year and model of helmets recertified and rejected.

Example: At Camas Valley High School in 2001, the company recertified seven "Air" helmets made in 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1993, and rejected four "Air" helmets made in 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1992.

Kasco Athletic Reconditioners of Spokane has contracts with some Eastern Oregon high schools.

The company lists number of recertified helmets, but not the year of helmets. It does list year and model of rejected helmets.

Example: At Baker High School in 2001, the company recertified 59 helmets and rejected two "Air" helmets made in 1987.

In Lane County and the surrounding area: The majority of high schools contract individually with Riddell/All-American to recondition their football equipment, as does KidSports. Most others use Athletic Repair Service in Canby.

HELMET COMPANIES

Although injuries and deaths resulting from blows to the head have become rarer in high school football as equipment has become more sophisticated, lawsuits almost always follow such catastrophes. In fact, liability issues are the reason only five companies still manufacture football helmets in the United States, industry officials say. That compares with about 15 companies in the 1970s.

Here are the companies that remain. The latter three deal primarily in youth helmets for kids age 14 and younger.

Riddell Corp. of Chicago, which supplies the National Football League, colleges and high schools.

Schutt Sports in Litchfield, Ill., which in the mid-1980s took over the former Bike helmet line.

Adams USA of Cookeville, Tenn.

NaconaAthletic Supply of Nocona, Texas.

All-Star Sporting Goods in Shirley, Mass.

CAPTION(S):

Ralph Conradt (left) and his attorney, Art Johnson, explain why they think the helmet (foreground) that Max Conradt wore during his senior year at Waldport High School resulted in the player's brain injury. The Lincoln County School District believes the helmet was manufactured in 1982. Thomas Boyd / The Register-Guard A Riddell Revolution (forefront) lies on a chair at South Eugene High School. The state-of- the-art helmet, introduced last year, is computer- designed and was created to decrease football concussions. But they are expensive, costing about $150. Older helmets sit in the background. Please turn to FOOTBALL, Page A10 Football: Inspection varies by school, between states Continued from Page A1 Stephanie Barrow / The Register-Guard