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St. Luke's Coach Noel Thomas Has Seen The Future of Football
St. Luke’s Head Football Coach Noel Thomas’ number one concern is player safety and, in particular, brain health.
With people across the world talking about the dangers and long-term effects of concussions, Thomas was intrigued to hear about a Dartmouth Football program initiative—The Dartmouth Way— designed with player safety at the forefront.
After some help from some of our St. Luke’s families, Thomas and assistant coach Jeff Fuller visited Hanover, New Hampshire, to watch Big Green Head Coach Buddy Teevens and his staff implement their pioneering philosophies.
‘The Dartmouth Way’, means no player-on-player tackling in practice. This defies traditional training which emphasizes players’ tackling techniques. Instead, all tackling is carried out on inanimate objects such padded shields, tackling dummies, or the state of the art MVP, Dartmouth’s Mobile Virtual Player (MVP)—a tackling dummy on wheels guided by a remote control.
Thomas said, “The Dartmouth way is to tackle more but never tackle each other. Technique is key, head is out, your hammer (point of contact) is your shoulder, chest and bicep. That’s where you want to connect, with your head out, eyes up, and then when you land you roll out of it preserving your head and brain.”
Teevens and his staff have been working this way since 2010 and the results have been astounding. Since eliminating tackling they have seen concussions significantly reduced with zero defensive concussions last season. There has also been a decrease in other injuries within the defensive line, something Thomas hopes translates to the St. Luke’s Storm program: “This makes total sense and is intelligent. We have implemented many of the drills and philosophies as a staff. I have taken all the information coach Teevens was kind enough to share and used it to recreate drills so we can have our guys use the same type of principles—but do it the Storm way.”
Not only has Dartmouth seen the physical benefits of the initiative, they have seen dramatic results on the field too, including a remarkable increase in tackle success and a big upturn in the win column.
Thomas had the privilege to test drive the 180lb MVP which can ‘run’ a 40-yard dash in 4.7 seconds. He was amazed by its capabilities: “With this technology you can reenact almost any scenario you want to in practice. It can go left, right, forward, back, accelerate, decelerate. It’s amazing! And the coach controls it all from the sideline with a remote control!”
The MVP could very well be the future of football and Thomas hopes St. Luke’s will be one of the first high school’s to have the technology and continue to lead the charge on player safety:
“I am excited for our new partnership with Dartmouth. I need our families to know that we deeply care about brain health so I am excited that St. Luke’s is blazing a trail with this initiative. There’s no question that at St. Luke’s we are focusing in the highest possible way on creating the best football experience for our student-athletes.”
St. Luke’s School is a secular (non-religious), private school in New Canaan, CT for grades 5 through 12 serving over 35 towns in Connecticut and New York. Our exceptional academics and diverse co-educational community foster students’ intellectual and ethical development and prepare them for top colleges. St. Luke’s Center for Leadership builds the commitment to serve and the confidence to lead.
