The Taylor Haugen Foundation is launching a national #PledgetoProtect campaign to foster open dialogue about the issue of abdominal injuries and encourage better protection against them.

The campaign comes on the 10-year anniversary of the death of high school sophomore Taylor Haugen from a severe abdominal injury suffered from playing football.

“With a new football season kicking off, we’re urging everyone to take the Pledge to Protect for the sake of our young athletes,” said Kathy Haugen, co-founder with husband Brian of the Taylor Haugen Foundation, which was established in fall 2008 in honor of their late son.

The new campaign invites student-athletes, their coaches and trainers, parents, school administrators and boosters, the medical community and others to pledge to help better protect young football players from the risks of abdominal injuries, whether it’s through simple awareness or making sure the athletes have the right protective gear or even ensuring they are receiving proper instruction on safe tackling techniques.

Those interested can visit the Taylor Haugen Foundation website to take the Pledge which is shareable on other social media platforms.

In addition, the Haugens say their foundation has set a new goal of making sure that, by 2028, everyone playing youth football throughout the United States is wearing abdominal protection equipment as an essential part of their sports gear.

“One of the biggest lessons we learned from Taylor’s death–and from the grieving parents of other kids who’ve been injured or died under similar circumstances–is that people have not been taking the problem of abdominal injuries in football seriously enough,” Kathy Haugen said.

“Kids are not being properly outfitted to protect against these injuries, and in many cases the players and their parents are not even being made aware of these risks,” she pointed out. “That really woke us up to a failure in the system. We have to stop being so reckless with our children’s lives and start making sure they have the protection they need when they’re playing the game they love so much. To do that, we must first ramp up the dialogue.”

The Taylor Haugen Foundation will begin lobbying state and national high school athletic associations and related groups in an effort to make abdominal protection gear standard for youth football–instead of an add-on or an afterthought–within the next decade.

“High school coaches and parents of student-athletes need to know that there is a good variety of effective, high-tech abdominal safety equipment that’s not just accessible, but also fairly inexpensive,” said Brian Haugen. “It should not be that difficult to make this vital type of gear a basic part of the football uniform all over the U.S.”

In the meantime, the foundation will continue its longstanding grassroots efforts to reach players, coaches, trainers, parents, etc. with both educational material and the latest protective equipment addressing abdominal injuries.

Those efforts include the foundation’s signature initiative, its YESS Program (Youth Equipment for Sports Safety), which, in addition to raising awareness about the importance of abdominal safety, helps provide protective sports equipment to school teams. Over the past decade, nearly 4,500 youths in 74 schools across 13 states have been outfitted by the YESS Program with protective sports gear aimed at lowering the incidence of abdominal trauma.

“We’re proud of the growth of the YESS Program as the only known nonprofit in the country dealing solely with this recurring injury, and we’re going to continue advocating more abdominal protection,” Brain Haugen said.

The Taylor Haugen Foundation is based in Okaloosa County on the Florida Panhandle, where Taylor played for the Niceville High School junior varsity football team. During that August scrimmage a decade ago, he ruptured his liver when he was tackled simultaneously by two defenders coming from opposite directions. The abdominal injury proved fatal, taking Taylor’s life despite hours of surgery.

The Taylor Haugen Foundation accepts donations at https://taylorhaugen.org/donate/.