The headgear debate in women's lacrosse.

Two games, two kinds of head protection

In men's and boys' lacrosse every player wears a hard helmet with a face mask and chin strap: World Lacrosse's men's field rules (2025-2027 v1.0, Rule 17.1) require one without naming a standard, and the NFHS boys' rules (Rule 1-9-1, from the 2024 changes) require a helmet meeting the NOCSAE standard. Women's and girls' field players do not wear that helmet. The debate on this page is about whether they should wear a different, soft-shell headgear, and who decides.

The standard: ASTM F3137

ASTM F3137, the "Standard Specification for Headgear Used in Women's Lacrosse (excluding Goalkeepers)", was released in 2015. It calls for flexible-shell headgear rather than a hard-shell helmet, and compliant headgear was first sold in 2016 (Comstock and colleagues, 2020). USA Lacrosse Magazine says ASTM approved it in May 2015, after a task group formed in May 2012 at USA Lacrosse's request, and that USA Lacrosse first asked NOCSAE for a women's standard; NOCSAE declined to write a separate one and proposed the men's helmet standard instead. As cited in the 2020 paper, US Lacrosse said the standard was written to reduce ball-to-head and stick-to-head impact forces.

ASTM's store lists the active edition as F3137-15(2022), reapproved in 2022. ASTM's summary says it sets shock-absorption, ball-impact and deformation tests for adult and youth headgear against incidental stick and ball impacts, allows no partial compliance, and does not cover governing bodies' administrative rules. World Lacrosse's FAQ and May 2026 release call it "F3137-15A", an edition label that does not appear on ASTM's store; this site uses ASTM's designation.

Who requires, permits or bars it

The World Lacrosse women's field rows are both correct for their dates: the 2025-2026 book bars headgear, and the May 2026 decision, which World Lacrosse says goes into the revised 2027-2030 book, permits it from 2029. A search summary of a USA Lacrosse FAQ page, which returned an error when opened, says headgear remains optional at all levels of US girls' and women's lacrosse; the current 2026 rule is unconfirmed. British university lacrosse (BUCS) was reported in a search summary to make soft-shell headgear optional with eyewear still required underneath; that is also unconfirmed.

Florida

Florida was the first US state to require headgear in high school girls' lacrosse (Sports Litigation Alert, May 2018). The dates are reported three ways:

• A search summary of USA Lacrosse's headgear timeline says the Florida High School Athletic Association required headgear in June 2014, before any women's headgear standard existed. The timeline itself returned an error when opened.
• Sports Litigation Alert describes two phases: protective headbands plus goggles from 2015, then headgear it called hard helmets from 2018.
• The 2022 British Journal of Sports Medicine study, as summarised in a search result, describes Florida's F3137 mandate as running from 2018.

No FHSAA document was found. Sports Litigation Alert also reported that some Florida coaches worried helmets would encourage rougher play (the "gladiator effect"), and that some believed litigation concerns drove the rule. Those are reported opinions, not findings.

What the studies reported

• Comstock and colleagues, Injury Epidemiology, 2020. Using High School RIO data from 2008-09 to 2018-19, they counted 614 concussions in boys' lacrosse (4.66 per 10,000 athletic exposures) and 384 in girls' (3.91 per 10,000). Stick or ball contact caused 72.7 percent of girls' concussions against 23.5 percent of boys', and the stick or ball concussion rate was 2.60 times higher in girls. The authors estimated that 44.7 percent of the girls' concussions might have been prevented had girls worn the boys' hard-shell helmet, a modelled estimate from observational data. They noted that headgear use among uninjured players was not recorded and that no published study had then evaluated the new flexible headgear against concussion.
• USA Lacrosse and NOCSAE study, reported 8 October 2021. A three-year study the two co-funded found 59 percent greater concussion incidence among high school girls not wearing headgear than among Florida players required to wear it: 74 percent greater in games and 42 percent in practices.
• British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2022. A study comparing Florida with 31 states without a mandate over 2019 to 2021 was reported to find 0.27 concussions per 1,000 exposures with the mandate and 0.44 without (rate ratio 1.59), significant in games (1.74) but not in practices (1.42). The journal page returned an error, so these figures rest on a search summary; they are consistent with USA Lacrosse's 59 percent.
• A 2017 sensor study in girls' high school varsity lacrosse was reported, in a search summary of a University of New Hampshire listing, to find no meaningful difference in impact rates with or without headgear. It was small and recorded no game concussions. Unconfirmed.
• World Lacrosse, May 2026, cited a 2024 study finding a 50 percent reduction in concussion rates among women's athletes wearing soft-shell headgear. It did not name the study, and this site could not identify it, so the figure is World Lacrosse's claim.

What bodies and researchers say

• USA Lacrosse, February 2020 (as NBC New York reported): there was not yet enough data to show headgear makes the sport safer, but it was open to a mandate if evidence supported one. NBC also reported that USA Lacrosse had at first opposed Florida's mandate.
• USA Lacrosse, October 2021: it supports F3137 headgear, helped develop the standard, receives no financial benefit from protective equipment, and treats headgear as one part of a wider approach with education, age-appropriate rules, coach training and certified officials. The article announced no mandate.
• USA Lacrosse's concussion guidance, in a search summary of a document that returned an error when opened, says no current helmet or headgear can prevent concussion, because helmet standards are written against severe brain injury and skull fracture. Unconfirmed.
• Dr Dawn Comstock, Colorado School of Public Health, in February 2020 supported a mandate, saying headgear would prevent many but not all concussions, and called the gladiator-effect concern unsupported by research (NBC New York).
• World Lacrosse's FAQ says players who do not wear headgear pose no safety concern to others.
• NFHS concussion guidance, in a 2011 adaptation, says there is no convincing scientific evidence that mouthguards prevent concussion.

What the men's helmet standard tests

NOCSAE's men's lacrosse helmet standard, ND041 (current version ND041-15m24, modified June 2024), tests new helmets, fitted with a compatible faceguard on NOCSAE headforms, in drop impacts at set velocities and locations at room and high temperature, after a roll-off stability test. No impact may exceed a severity index of 1200. A June 2005 revision removed the ball-impact test from this standard. NOCSAE states that ND041 does not purport to address all safety problems, and the helmet's required warning label says no helmet protects against all impacts and that severe head or neck injury may still occur. The standard, not this site, decides whether a helmet complies; more is on helmets and NOCSAE, and the women's product is on women's headgear.