Case Western Reserve University's School of Dentistry is helping to take a bite out of oral injuries and concussions suffered by Cleveland high school athletes.

The dental school, teaming with the Cleveland Browns Foundation, has provided personalized, professional-grade mouth guards to the 31 members of Cleveland's East Technical High School football team. The mouth guards, each valued at approximately $100, were given free to the students through a new pilot program at the dental school.

Case dentists provided dental screenings to and
took mouth impressions from the East Tech Scarabs
in order to provide each player with a specially fitted mouth guard from Sportsguard Laboratories Inc. of Kent—the same mouth guards used by Browns' quarterbacks Kelly Holcomb and Tim Couch.The mouth guard also is the same kind the Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James sported in a recent Sports Illustrated photo.

The mouth guards made for the East Tech athletes not only are crafted to fit each individual athlete but also come in school colors-brown and yellow for the Scarabs-and have each player's name-or nickname like Turbo, Smurf and Killa for a few of the high school teammates-inscribed and embedded under the laminated coating.

"This is definitely the Rolls Royce of mouth guards," said East Tech's Athletic Director Oscar Marcus, adding that he spends a big portion of his athletic budget on "boil and bite" mouth guards that tend to get lost and, if found, have to be thrown away.

According to Marcus, the football players were "chomping at the bit" to travel to Case to have impressions made and a dental screening, so the team arrived 30 minutes early. And at the end of the visit, the athletes showed their appreciation by giving the five volunteer dentists an impromptu round of applause.

The Cleveland East Technical High School football players were the first recipients of mouth guards in a new community service program from the Case dental school under the direction of James Lalumandier, chair of the department of community dentistry, and with support from the Cleveland Browns Foundation.

Return to the online edition of the 8-28-03 Campus News.