CALUMET – At the beginning of this school year, two high schools, Calumet and Lake Linden-Hubbell, volunteered to participate in a pilot program under the Michigan High School Athletic Association designed to test student athletes for concussion after a suspected head injury during a sports event.

The program involves administering what is called the King-Devick Test. The test measures things such as eye movement, speech, language and concentration, in comparison with a baseline score which was established during the pre-season. Any slowing of time required to complete the King-Devick test can be a sign that the athlete should be removed from the game for further evaluation. All athletes are given the test at the start of the season, and the results determine the baseline score.

Dorothy Jamison, certified athletic trainer with Aspirus Keweenaw, is in charge of administering the test and recording the results. She is very satisfied with the pilot program.

“We’re catching things that you might not have thought would be a concussion sooner, probably rather than later,” Jamison said. “I’ve been happy with the accuracy of it, too. With all the things we do, plus this (test), we’re getting to be about 99 percent specific for concussion.”

After a suspected head injury, players take the test on the sideline. The test is given using a tablet and takes less than one minute to conduct. The results of the test are then compared to the baseline score and recorded.

“The beauty of the test that I’m finding is that it’s going to pick up signs of a concussion probably sooner than either I or the athlete would notice,” Jamison said. “You can watch somebody get hit and totally knocked to the ground, and they’ll come in and say, ‘No, I’m good. I feel fine.’ You can run them through this test and find out that the time is different, or they have errors, and then 15, 20, 30 minutes later, then the symptoms come on. Well, we’ve now kept them out of that subsequent hit that could really be devastating.”