Thanks to some on-campus knowledge and ingenuity, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga quarterback Jare Gault has been able to move with confidence during the past week as the Mocs prepare for Saturday’s season opener at fourth-ranked Oklahoma.
Gault suffered a high ankle sprain on Aug. 11, and the early prognosis was the he could be out for two weeks. The sprain turned out to be rather mild and a few days later Gault, who is trying to earn the starting job, was eager to return to the field.
That’s when Gary Wilkerson, a professor in UTC’s Graduate Athletic Training Program and a leading authority on ankle injuries and treatment, stepped in with a solution — a new kind of ankle brace of his own design, one that is created for high ankle sprains.
“It’s taken a lot of years of thought and playing around with a lot of different designs, and I think maybe it’s finally ready,” he said.
The brace has a sole that goes in Gault’s cleat, so his body weight helps stabilize it, and the brace is comprised mostly of a moldable, high-strength plastic named Kydex. There are braces on each side of the ankle and the custom-molded plastic fits from the top of the ankle to the middle of the shin, with a hinge on each side at the ankle to allow Gault full range of motion when moving forward or backward, while keeping the ankle from moving inward.
On the back are criss-crossing velcro straps that allow Gault to adjust it to exactly the tightness he wants.
“When I was looking at it the first time, I wasn’t real sure what to think because I hadn’t seen anything like it before,” Gault said. “But it works; it’s not uncomfortable and it doesn’t weigh anymore than a regular brace does.
“It’s a lot harder, there’s no give in it. Some braces or tape, you’ll get a little bend in them — but with this there’s no bend in it.”
Wilkerson said he first began working in brace design back in the 1980s. While working on his dissertation at the University of Kentucky, he created a new kind of taping technique that helps restrict ankle movement.
From there, he said, he began formulating ideas for an ankle brace related to high ankle sprains, which occur when the ankle is forced inward and make up about 10-15 percent of all ankle sprains, according to Wilkerson.
The most common sprains occur when the ankle rolls outward (called an “inversion” sprain because the sole of the foot goes inward), as is often seen when a basketball player lands on another player’s foot. And Wilkerson said most of the braces that are on the market were created with that injury in mind.
“The mechanics of what’s going on in the ankle are so complex that a lot of people don’t understand it very well. So what tends to happen is the taping procedures or the bracing procedures are really designed for the typical inversion ankle sprain, which is a completely different mechanism of injury than a high sprain,” Wilkerson said. “And there just hasn’t been anything out there that has been specifically designed to attenuate the forces that are associated with (the high sprain).”
Wilkerson said he filed a patent on the brace that Gault is wearing — and linebackers Jarvis Newson and Steven Smigelsky will be getting them, as well — a couple of years ago. He said he made one for quarterback Antonio Miller last season, from materials he had at home, and from that homemade prototype, which Miller wore for a short period of time, Wilkerson said he knew he’d finally nailed the design.
Wilkerson eventually joined forces with Fillauer, a local manufacturer of prosthetics and orthotic products, and together they matched Wilkerson’s design with the high-tech materials that Fillauer uses and produced a custom-made, light-but-strong ankle brace.
One that won’t bend, even when Gault is squashed under a pile of linemen.
