Dental Hygiene Students Create Custom Mouthguards for the Georgia State Football Team

ATLANTA—The Georgia State football team will kick off their season opener this Thursday with some extra protection thanks to students in the Dental Hygiene program at Georgia State’s Perimeter College.

Dr. Amy Smith supervised 24 dental hygiene students who customized mouthguards for 38 players as part of her dental materials course this summer.

“It really is a perfect match,” Smith said of the project that received enthusiastic support from Georgia State Athletics, which helped to fund the cost for materials.

Typically, as part of Smith’s dental materials class, students create mouth impressions on one another to create bleaching trays. But after learning that the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) requires all football players to wear mouthguards as a safety feature, Smith approached Georgia State Athletics about her students creating custom mouthguards for the Panthers.

This led to dental hygiene students like Kelsey Anderson spending part of their lab hours in Georgia State’s athletics training facility downtown, where they created impressions for a third of the team's football players. They then took the impressions to the dental hygiene clinic on Perimeter’s Dunwoody Campus where they crafted models to form the mouthguards. Dental hygiene program faculty finished forming the mouthguards before students returned to the training facility to fit players for their custom pieces.

“It was fun being able to do a hands-on event based on a topic we learned in class, and actually doing it physically was more beneficial to my learning than any book could have taught me,” Anderson said.

Dental Hygiene student Megan Mills ensures the proper fit for a custom-made mouthguard modeled for linebacker Jordan Veneziale.

Bob Murphy, GSU’s associate athletic director, considers the project a game changer, noting that custom mouthguards are usually preferable to the basic “boil and bite” ones that are worn by youth players and even some pro players.

“They're not as custom and they don't stay in the mouth when you talk, which is the advantage of these custom mouthguard,” Murphy said. “These mouthguards really hug the teeth and will stay in place when guys are talking or, you know, screaming, yelling at teammates and calling out signals—that sort of thing.”

Smith considers the mouthguard collaboration a win-win for her students and the student- athletes.

“Dental hygiene students gain the skills they need to take out when they go into private practice, and then our athletes get the required equipment that they need,” she said.

Georgia State will suit up for its 14th season football opener with the team hosting Rhode Island on Thursday, Aug. 31 at 7 p.m. at Center Parc Stadium.

Story by Kysa Anderson Daniels
Main photo by Dale Zanine
Secondary photo by Justine Salerno