VENTURA : Prep Athletes Get Custom Mouthpieces

Buena High School football players got mouthy this week.

With 10 dentists and orthodontists standing by, 96 football players chomped and bit and gnashed their teeth on newly fitted mouth guards.

The professional mouthpieces were custom-made for free for the junior varsity and varsity football players by a group of local dentists.

It was part of a new community outreach program offered by the Santa Barbara-Ventura County Dental Society, said Tony Perez, a Ventura dentist who coordinated the effort.

Any school in Ventura or Santa Barbara counties with an athletic program that involves contact sports can call the society and ask for similar service, he said. In the past few months, the society has fitted teeth guards for athletes at Newbury Park, Thousand Oaks, Agoura and Westlake high schools in the east county, Perez said.

Sports teams at St. Bonaventure High School in Ventura and Channel Islands High School in Oxnard have also requested mouth guards, he said.

This week, Perez and the other dentists brought finished mouth guards to Buena High School to fit them for waiting players. The dentists paid their first visit to the school two weeks ago, when they made plaster-like impressions of each player’s jaw.

“It went pretty smoothly,” Perez said of the mold-making. “We only had one young man who gagged and got sick to his stomach. Most of them were very stoic.”

Ventura mother Julie Ueltschi said she was grateful for the donations. Her two sons, Travis, 16, and Brandon, 15, both football linesmen, were fitted for guards.

“You can buy those standard mouthpieces for $20 at Big Five,” Ueltschi said. “But these are professionally done. It’s just a little less to worry about when they’re out on the field.”

Perez calls the commercial mouth guards “boil and bites.”

“You boil them in hot water and then bite into it when it’s soft. They’re OK, but the mouth guards we make go all the way up the cheek and fit real tight. The kids have a real tough time dislodging them.”

Mouthpieces are recommended for many contact sports, including football, water polo, wrestling and basketball, Perez said. Otherwise, a sharp blow to the face could dislocate a jaw, causing complications with chewing and biting later in life, he said.

A little bit of philanthropy may also help erase memories of less pleasant visits with a dentist, Perez said.

“It’s a nice public service that gives dentists a better name,” he said. “Sometimes people are a little bit happier to see us than others. This is one of them.”