Collegiate Times

There’s an injured player on the field.

Virginia Tech athletic trainers rush the scene with first aid in hand, yet it’s not a joint that’s ailing. They toss aside Ace bandages and athletic tape to uncover a small cylinder labeled Save-A-Tooth, an emergency tooth-preserving system.

“It’s a solution that’s designed to keep the tooth roots alive,” said Mike Goforth, director of athletic training.

If an athlete has his pearly whites whacked, the product can maintain a stray for 24 hours.

The Tech training staff has yet to bottle an incisor, Goforth said, but it’s a feasible crisis that would be handed off to the athletics department’s on-call dentists, John Robertson and Jay Bass.

Robertson and Bass run a local practice, Family Dentistry, and have served the athletics department since Goforth contacted Robertson two years ago.

Robertson’s daughter, Heather Lafon, had just started working in the athletics department, and word spread of her father’s prior involvement with sports.

When Robertson’s son, Michael, played football for Blacksburg High School years ago, Family Dentistry offered to make the entire team’s mouth guards.

“I think it was a community service-type thing to do,” Robertson said. “Just giving something back to the school over there.”

Michael has since graduated college, but Robertson and Bass continue to assist the local high school each season.

Shouldering the Tech athletics department hasn’t added outstanding responsibilities either.

“Really we haven’t had a whole lot of sports-related injuries,” Robertson said, “because they are good about having the athletes wear the mouth guards and safety protection.”

Family Dentistry also makes Tech’s mouth guards. The most common Tech sports that utilize them are football, lacrosse and wrestling.

At the beginning of football season, for example, a Family Dentistry assistant will accompany either Robertson or Bass for a couple mornings in the athletic department. Their players bite down on a specialized material to create impressions of their teeth. With those impressions, Family Dentistry makes hardened molds of players’ mouths.

“We’re lucky in that we’re usually just making the molds for the new players,” Robertson said, “because the previous years had them made (already).”

The athletics department handles the rest of the process, Goforth said, although Family Dentistry provides the necessary materials. Goforth and his staff heat-vacuum square orange “blanks” over the teeth molds, then trim the excess to yield a final product.

Goforth said current mouth guards are a considerable advancement over previous models. Once bulky objects that prevented clear speech, mouth guards are now light, and their slender dimensions hardly obstruct communication.

Yet it’s not guaranteed athletes will remember to wear them constantly.

In the football game against Miami this season, Tech quarterback Tyrod Taylor was mixed in a pile of bodies. Goforth said as everyone writhed to stand, Taylor had his helmet ripped off. Taylor’s misplaced mouth guard failed to prevent the chipping of one of his front teeth.

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