Foundation provides safety equipment to Spruce Mountain football team

JAY – Football players at the Spruce Mountain High School will have better head protection next year, after a foundation dedicated toward promoting safety in sports donated more than $12,000 of high-quality sports equipment to the team.

The Jake Lord Play It Safe Foundation is a nonprofit organization that raises funds to purchase equipment designed to reduce the likelihood of concussions in young athletes. It also seeks to heighten public awareness and understanding of concussions and their impact on athletes’ mental health, as well as advocate for laws and policies that better protect participants from serious head injuries.

The foundation, founded by Jenna Lord, is named for her brother, a star athlete at what was then-Jay High School. Jake Lord’s suicide in 2011, a couple months into his first semester in college, was “heartbreaking,” Jenna Lord said Friday evening. Recent medical science has indicated that concussions can alter an athlete’s mental state, creating mood swings and leading to depression. Repeated head injuries have been linked to the high-profile suicides of National Football League players and other athletes.

Jenna Lord formed the Jake Lord Play It Safe Foundation so others “would not have to experience the pain that my family knows everyday.” Addressing the team, assembled on the bleachers, Lord said: “Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.”

Both Rep. Paul Gilbert (D – Jay) and Sen. Tom Saviello (R – Wilton) thanked the Lords for their work with the foundation. Both addressed LD 609, sponsored by Gilbert, which will begin impacting secondary schools at the start of the next school year, and the lower grades in 2015. The law mandates that all school staff have basic suicide awareness and prevention training, with some staff members required to have advanced training in the subject. Grace Eaton, who lost her own son to suicide in 1997 and was an outspoken advocate for LD 609, also spoke to its importance.

Matt Thomas, representing the helmet provider, Xenith, said that the equipment used state-of-the-art shock absorbing air cells and other advancements to reduce the chance of concussions. Despite that, he told students, no helmet was concussion proof, and good training, conditioning and observation of new rules and regulations aimed at reducing the frequency of the injuries was paramount.

Thomas also said he was impressed by the donation of equipment from a foundation that had raised funds through the community, rather than a corporate sponsor. “No one’s done anything quite like this,” he said, before lining students up to be sized for their new helmets.

Jenna Lord closed the event by wishing the students a “successful and safe football season.”

“We will all be rooting for you,” she said.

More information about the Jake Lord Play It Safe Foundation can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/JLPISF/info or by contacting Jenna Lord at playitsafefoundation@gmail.com.