FIDLAY, Ohio — Give your mouth a sporting chance.
It’s a staple for the Academy for Sports Dentistry and for Jack Winters, a retired pediatric dentist based in Findlay, a retired Division I college football official, and an innovator of safer sporting equipment.
- A retired Findlay dentist says the custom-fit mouthpiece is a way of cushioning the blow when it comes under the chin
- The 81-year-old dentist is making the mouthguards in his garage for the University of Findlay Football team
- He's planning on pitching the design to the NFL
“So, I think we’re really onto something, a way of cushioning the blow that might be received when it comes under the chin,” said Winters. “There’s no helmet out there that will help protect that chin area and that’s where a lot of time they’re spending so much time, so much money, so much research, and that’s good what they’ve done, but that’s not the complete answer.”
That answer, he says, is a custom-fit mouthpiece — a design introduced to him by Australian dentist Brette Dorney back in 1994 at an international Academy of Dental Traumatology meeting.
“At that meeting, I met a young dentist. We were both young in those days, from Australia, and they were making a different mouthguard than we were making in the United States,” said Winters.
The mouthguard has two layers and is pressure-laminated.
“The orange layer is the initial layer that we put over, we can put that athlete’s name, number, logo, then we bring the second layer over the top and that’s why it’s called a laminated, it’s like the windshield of your car and the grains run differently and the athlete can’t chew through this as easily as he can with some of the boil and bites.”
It’s a custom design that Winters, who is now 81, is making in his garage for the University of Findlay football team.
“I have a little setup out in my garage and I’m able to make the mouthguards, once the model, once the impression is made, I can construct them out here,” Winters said.
University of Findlay Football Athletic Trainer Aaron Wass says Winters is extremely dedicated to this innovation and the team’s program.
“He makes every single one by hand, he makes the mold, so it’s a huge blessing to have somebody willing to, in their retirement, spend a lot of time providing great care for us,” said Wass.
It’s care that could reduce the risk or severity of a concussion.
“Sometimes in football, it’s impossible to prevent a huge collision,” said Wass. “But if we can make our guy safer with a better mouthguard, hopefully we can prevent concussion or at least reduce severity.”
Moving forward, Winters hopes the National Football League will consider this mouthguard’s effect.
Right now, mouthpieces are only required in high school and college contests.
“it’s not required now in the NFL to wear a mouthguard, so the players who are wearing mouthguards are wearing the ones of their own choosing and the quality of mouthguards, as I showed earlier, are not all equal,” said Winters.
The University of Findlay is in the process of gathering a large sample of data to assess the effectiveness of the mouthguard.
Winters says he is planning to pitch the design to the NFL.
