Teeth and team spirit: UB dental school and UB Athletics partner to provide student-athletes with custom mouth guards

By Sarah Smykowski 

In late July, the UB dental school and UB Athletics teamed up to provide UB’s football players with custom mouth guards for the upcoming season.

The hands-on project provided dental students with an exciting opportunity to step out of the clinic and into the training room, where they mixed alginate, loaded trays, and took custom impressions for each player. The students poured the casts back at Squire Hall and returned the molds to the Bulls, where the athletic trainers created the mouth guards on-site using their vacuum-forming machine.

Over the course of an afternoon, eight dental students took approximately 35 mouth guard impressions under the supervision of Eugena Stephan, DMD, PhD, associate dean for clinical affairs for the dental school, who has led the school’s participation for two seasons.

The partnership between the dental school and UB Athletics dates back several years, when it was formed by the Bulls athletic trainers and Dr. David Crolgio, a retired clinical assistant professor who taught courses on sports dentistry and practiced as a team dentist for the UB Bulls and Buffalo Sabres. Despite Dr. Croglio’s retirement from the dental school, the collaboration lives on. 

Both UB dental students and the student-athletes benefitted from the teamwork, connection and mutual support created by the cross-campus partnership. It also emphasized the importance of oral health in whole-body wellness, a topic of particular importance to athletes.

“Our students loved the opportunity to gain real-world experience, work one-on-one with the players, and get a glimpse into the exciting field of sports dentistry,” said Stephan. “This kind of unique collaboration is what makes UB truly special. We look forward to partnering with UB Athletics again in future seasons!”