Catching concussions behind the plate

You may not be aware that Virginia Tech Helmet Lab has spent the last 15 years testing helmets. Concussions in baseball, like a catcher getting hit by a foul tip, is a lot different than what we see in football. We probably need to design head protection differently for catchers than we currently do because it's a different mechanism that we need to design around. In football it's a big head push, right? The head quickly changes velocity, you see it with your eyes. When a catcher gets hit it's more like a little ding and the ball bounces off and the head barely moves and biomechanically that's a very different response. Concussions are a big mystery. There's a lot we don't know. We don't always know exactly how the biomechanics link to some clinical outcome. Whether or not they're hurt, what their symptoms are, what the symptom presentation is, and there's different ways they get hurt and we see this across all sports. So when we start to design head protection it really should be sports specific. The science is still advancing, there's still more to learn, but we can do things now to start better preventing injury. It's definitely rewarding to do this line of work. Seeing your research used in the real world to reduce injuries is rewarding for our entire team. The grad students like seeing people use their work and we're very proud of the work we do and the number of injuries we've reduced.

research 1:26 Catching concussions behind the plate

By:

Craig Newcomb

7 May 2026 262

Steve Rowson, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the director of the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, is the featured speaker at the recent Tech on Tap at Academic Building One in Alexandria. Rowson shares his research into catcher's helmets, why they may not be effective in preventing concussions, and how a new design could be more effective in keeping players safe.

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