Reconditioning

Days, weeks, and especially months of incessant contact, unrelenting abuse and inevitable overuse can take its toll on football players. The same can be said for those players’ equipment. The off-season can be a time for both players and coaches alike to rejuvenate and recharge from an arduous season – successful, disastrous, or simply somewhere in between. But who looks after the players’ equipment? At the professional and collegiate levels, monitoring, inspecting and routine maintenance of equipment often fall to an individual assigned, trained and practiced at this duty – the equipment manager. But at small colleges and in the high schools, from pee wee leagues and into junior high programs, caring for the equipment that protects the players – particularly the helmets and shoulder pads – becomes just one more responsibility of the coaches who already have plenty to do. So