The general aim was to contrast accelerations caused by baseball impacts for different catcher mask designs. Study1 focused on impact locations for a perpendicular ball trajectory. Study2 examined perpendicular and oblique trajectories striking a single mask location. A 5.9 kg head model instrumented with a 3-d accelerometer recording at 512 Hz was mounted upright with springs in a shallow ball joint. A pitching machine fired a standard baseball at ~28 m/s for all tests. Transverse plane resultant peak acceleration was gathered from 5 trials in each experimental combination. In Study1, effects of mask design (T=traditional, H=hockey, and M=modified traditional) and impact location (high or low and center or lateral) effects were examined via 3x2x2 ANOVA. For Study2, design and ball trajectory effects were analyzed via 3x2 ANOVA. In Study1, the triple interaction was significant. For high/center collisions, T & H were 41% lower than M; for low/center impacts, H was 40% less than T & M; for high/side strikes, H was 33% less than T which was 32% less than M; and all 3 designs were equivalent for low/side contacts. T and H utilized different protection schemes. For T, energy transfer was reduced when equipment was displaced. For H, the more angled mask deflected the ball’s energy. Both mechanisms were impaired for M. In Study2, no significant effects were identified. The trajectory conditions may have relied solely on the mask padding. Both the T and H designs offer protection, with the H performing somewhat better for the conditions tested here.
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