Ask most parents whether their daughter needs a mouthguard for soccer, lacrosse, or flag football and you will get a shrug. These are not full contact sports. How bad can it be?
Pretty bad, actually. Dental injuries are among the most common and most expensive injuries in youth athletics. And the sports where mouthguards are not required are often the ones where athletes let their guard down, literally and figuratively.
The Numbers Parents Should Know
According to the American Dental Association, athletes who do not wear mouthguards are 60 times more likely to suffer dental injuries than those who do. The average cost of a knocked out tooth including treatment and follow up care runs into the thousands of dollars. A quality youth mouthguard costs less than twenty five dollars. The math is not complicated.
Sports Where Girls Are Most at Risk
Mouthguards are required in football, hockey, lacrosse, and boxing. But some of the highest rates of dental injury happen in sports with no mandate:
Soccer. Headers, collisions with other players, and falls on hard ground put teeth at real risk. Soccer is consistently in the top five sports for dental injuries in youth athletes.
Basketball. Elbows, falls, and fast-moving bodies in a small space make basketball one of the most common sources of chipped and knocked out teeth.
Flag football. Non-contact by the rules but physical in reality. Dives, collisions, and falls happen in every game.
Softball and baseball. Balls traveling at high speed, bats, and collisions at base all create real risk for facial and dental injury.
Cheerleading and dance. Tumbling, stunts, and high-energy movement create fall risks that most parents do not associate with dental injury.
Why Girl Athletes Specifically Need Better Options
Here is the thing most gear brands miss. The reason girls and young women do not wear mouthguards consistently is not that they do not understand the risk. It is that the options available to them were not designed with them in mind. Thick, bulky, adult-sized guards in black or basic blue are not what a twelve year old girl wants to put in her mouth before a game she has been looking forward to all week.
When gear is designed for the athlete who is actually going to wear it, compliance goes up. That is the whole premise behind FANGZ.
FANGZ: Protection Built for Her
FANGZ makes glitter and neon mouthguards specifically for girl athletes. Every guard is boil and bite, third-party SGS lab tested, free of BPA, phthalates, lead, and latex, and CPSIA compliant. Two sizes cover youth through adult. And the colors, FROSTWAVE, FIREBERRY, SUNFLARE, HYPERVOLT, HEATSEEKER, POWERSURGE, and GAMEBREAKER, are designed to match the energy she brings to every game.
The GAMEDAY CASE keeps the guard clean, fresh, and clipped to her bag so it is always ready when she is.
Protection she will actually wear. Shop at fangzmouthguards.com.
