ReAct

Three of four men playing football will suffer a concussion. That’s a lot of concussions! The CDC estimates that 1.7 million to 3.8 million Traumatic Brain Injuries occur each year. Through TBI research, scientists have found that every single hit results in brain damage, and those athletes who don’t report actually having a concussion still have that damage to their brain as if they did. This is a huge problem, and the best way to deal with a problem is to try to stop it before it happens. You must be wondering, how do you mitigate a concussion? The University of Cincinnati has been trying to lower this occurrence in their athletes. Through reaction and vision training, their current system resulted in zero preseason concussions in 2013, a much better number than the six that occurred the year before. The thought is that if you see it happening, then you can process it and react appropriately, lowering the risk of getting hit. Through my own research, I developed a new system that can be integrated into practice that not only does not interfere with typical practice training, but also it would compliment it. ReAct is a system that helps athletes to mitigate concussions through increasing their peripheral vision and reaction time, and coaches can monitor progress through an app that records everything as the athlete completes the course.