Robert Cleva shows off his Crasche Middie women’s lacrosse helmet.

Many years ago, Robert Cleva, who runs a commercial real estate business in Woodbury, fell off his bike, landed on the grass and hit his head. An avid exercise enthusiast, he got back on his bike the next day and wore a baseball batting helmet. Dissatisfied with other bike helmets and unhappy with his fallback version, he came up with his own design, eventually patenting a product for bikers, skiers and skateboarders—even police officers.

“People who don’t want to look like they’re wearing a helmet but want to have protection are our clients,” says Cleva, whose online head gear company is called Crasche New York. Last year they began marketing the Crasche Hat, which looks like a woolen ski cap (it’s actually 100 percent Acrylic) but has hidden “impact-resistant protective inserts” made out of polycarbonate plastic and padded with neoprene rubber and air chambers to cushion the shock.

Cleva noticed that parents were buying the Crasche Hat for their daughters playing lacrosse—especially if the girls had suffered concussions—and that surprised him. He had it tested to determine its effectiveness against the impacts of lacrosse sticks and balls to the player’s head.

“It turned out to be a very good product for stick to head but it was marginal for ball to head,” Cleva says.

In February 2012 he’d submitted the hat model to US Lacrosse (USL), the sport’s national governing body, based in Baltimore, where the first women’s lacrosse team played in the United States in 1926. The league itself has been debating how to address the concussion issue—a debate that Cleva inadvertently got caught up in. At first, he got an encouraging reply from Melissa Coyne, the women’s game director at USL.

“Your product complies with current USL rules for women’s lacrosse,” Coyne emailed Cleva in March 2012. “Hope that helps!”

But with the test results in hand, Cleva decided to redesign his product so it could withstand a ball speeding to the head at 78 mph and reduce the impact below the concussive level.

“We re-engineered it, and informed US Lacrosse that we’d made some changes,” Cleva says. “We opened it up—took the top off—because the girls didn’t want the skull cap, they wanted their hair [coming] out the top.”

He named the new model the Crasche Middie, after a lacrosse position. It resembled a head band, available in red, white, black, navy blue or light blue.

“It’s designed to rest on the head,” Cleva explains. “It’s attached to the goggles. When you pull the goggles down, it goes back with it.”

He’s most proud of the material used in the new headgear’s inserts. “You could hit the thing with a sledge hammer and you can’t crack it,” he says.

At this year’s January national lacrosse convention in Philadelphia, Cleva set up a booth featuring the Crashe Middies underneath a big banner proclaiming, “The future of headgear in girls lacrosse.” The future was short-lived, however. USL officials shut him down and escorted him out of the building. Cleva thought USL’s previous approval of the Crasche Hat extended to the Crasche Middie. He was mistaken, they informed him. He would have to submit his new design for approval.

“It happened to be seen by one of our rules committee members who brought up the fact that this product was different from the one that we had approved and this had not been approved,” Coyne tells the Press. “It’s significantly different!” She added that the Crasche Middie brochure “made some pretty incredible claims of its protective value, and that concerned some members of our organization, specifically our sports, science and safety committee…”

After Cleva submitted his new headgear for their examination, the USL’s rules subcommittee determined that the product was “deemed illegal for play.”  In their email to him, they said it violated “portions of Rule 2” regarding “Soft Head Gear…defined as any head covering without hard or unyielding parts that have the potential to injure another player. The product, Crasche Middie, contains hard inserts that are not unyielding which could possibly pose a danger to other players. Additionally, those inserts which [sic] are not adequately padded or appropriately secured and can be easily dislodged. They could potentially injure the player wearing the product or another player.”

Cleva was infuriated by USL’s response and wrote Coyne the following: “To claim that the inserts can come loose is patently false. To claim that they become a danger to other players is ridiculous.”

He sent them an impact test from ICS Laboratories in Ohio, which he’d paid for, claiming it showed that not only did his headgear pose no threat to another player it actually reduced the force of two players knocking heads if one wore the Crasche Middie and the other girl didn’t. USL’s Coyne was not persuaded.

“Parents are looking for protective headgear. We understand that,” says Coyne. “But we as a governing body also have a responsibility to make sure that consumers are protected.”

Coyne told Cleva that US Lacrosse is working closely with ASTM International, a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania formerly known as the American Society for Testing and Materials, to create a women’s lacrosse headgear standard. She suggested his company become a member. Cleva says joining would cost only $75, but he’s concerned that the terms of the membership could impinge on his patent rights. He is having his lawyer look into that issue before he signs up. Without a doubt, he insists, “My product will be the standard because it’s so effective.”

Of more immediate concern, he says, is that one of ASTM’s current members told him that setting standards could take two years at least. Any delay is hard for Cleva to take.

“How many girls who are denied the use of the Crasche Middie will subsequently suffer a preventable head injury?” Cleva wrote Coyne back in February after she suggested he wait until USL’s committee meeting in June.

The answer is that nobody knows.

A researcher at George Mason University, Shane Caswell, partnered with two members of USL’s sports science and safety committee to examine head injury incidents reported during 2008 and 2009 involving high school girls’ lacrosse players between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. Their study came out in February 2012. Gathering data from 529 varsity and junior varsity games, they found 21 concussions. Most of these injuries resulted from stick-to-head contact in front of the goal.

Coyne says that USL is constantly monitoring national research on the occurrence of concussions in the sport. “I don’t necessarily see that we’ve had this huge jump in the actual injury,” she says. “I think the actual diagnosis has been what’s changed.”

The girls’ game is intended to be safer than the boys’ game, says Stephanie Degennaro, who manages the Lacrosse Unlimited store in Miller Place. She played varsity lacrosse at Longwood High School in Brookhaven and at Stony Brook University. When she’s not selling merchandise for “the fastest sport on two feet,” she’s coaching and refereeing girls’ games.

“Basically women’s lacrosse is supposed to be a non-contact sport,” she says. “Everything is supposed to be finesse and controlled… Men’s lacrosse is a contact sport like football.”

Degennaro’s store does not carry headgear for girls, but she has noticed players wearing “these headband things” and “those soft foam ‘ugly’ helmets” on the field.

“Approving headgear is going to make the girls’ game more violent,” she says. “To be completely honest, I wouldn’t want to see the game go that way. Some of the girls out there wearing these helmets act as if they’re invincible. I would only want to give [headgear] to girls who’ve had prior concussions.”

One of those girls playing lacrosse with a concussion is Cindy Dreher’s 10-year-old daughter, Darby, who picked up the sport after watching her two older brothers play. The Babylon Village mother bought her a Crasche Middie because she had gotten a concussion from a serious horse-back riding accident last year.

“My daughter has dark hair so you don’t even notice she’s wearing it out there,” Dreher tells the Press. “It looks like a band for sweat. It doesn’t look like a helmet at all.”

Dreher had looked for a long time before she found Cleva’s product online.

“I had to do some research because what’s available for girls right now is this ridiculously stupid, soft helmet that doesn’t protect at all,” Dreher says. “They say it’s a ‘non-aggressive game’ but I don’t care because it’s got a stick and a ball, and those girls are very capable of hitting each other pretty hard with it…”

Lacrosse Unlimited’s Hauppauge store manager, Jason Sweet, a high school and college lax (lacrosse) player who still plays, thinks that giving girls’ more protection will change their game. “They might as well get gloves, too, and go out there and beat each other up like we do!” laughs Sweet, who’s had three concussions himself, but none since he started wearing a $234 helmet. By comparison, the Crasche Middie retails for under $30.

“I would say that most parents want headgear [for girls],” Sweet says, “Most players don’t.”

Cleva thinks one obstacle facing his product’s approval is growing tension within girls’ lacrosse about the future of the game.

“You have one camp that says, ‘Let’s put helmets on and protect the girls, and become like a boys’ sport. If it’s rough and tumble, who cares?’” Cleva explains. “The other side is saying: ‘That’s the worst thing. We don’t want the game to change. Leave it alone.’ US Lacrosse is in the ‘leave-it-alone’ camp. This is a big controversy, and I’ve kind of fallen into the middle of it.”

As of now only goalies in girls lacrosse are permitted to wear hard helmets. Goggles were mandated for all female players in 2004—New York State reportedly led this initiative—but now USL is considering whether the eyewear standards should be revised. “We’re taking a good look at that,” Coyne says.

Last week, Cleva got his hopes up when a USL official asked him to send his headgear to the rules committee at the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Then he learned that the USL’s own subcommittee, scheduled to convene this month, had tabled discussion of his headgear until June “when they can get the entire rules committee together,” Cleva says.

“Mr. Cleva has been told on several occasions that if he adjusts his product to fit the two elements that we wanted fixed – if he makes those adjustments—we are happy to look at his product again,” says Coyne. “But he has to address them just like anyone else. He’s not the first person to be rejected.”

Cleva has demonstrated the headgear’s ability to hang onto its inserts to Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) and to an aide in the office of Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford). He doesn’t believe USL is giving his product a fair shake.

“They’re saying it can come out and it can’t come out!” Cleva exclaims. Given the opportunity, this reporter shook the Middie as hard as possible for almost a minute and finally an insert dislodged when the head gear was hurled against the floor.

“When a 10-year-old comes to your office and her mother is terrified that the girl’s going to get hurt, it’s the human element that’s overpowering,” Cleva says. “We think we offer a very reasonable product that is going to offer impact protection and give some peace of mind to people and these people won’t let your daughter buy it.”

Sandra Bernhard

Some might call Sandra Bernhard the Siren of Snark, the Snide and the Snarl, but the celebrity comedian is so much nicer and kinder and sweeter than anyone would ever suspect when she’s not on stage. And that’s her secret.

When she’s on, channeling the moment, she can be so sharp that a laser would be a blunt instrument in another’s hands. Yet the truth is, at this point in her multi-faceted career, she’s actually mellowed, dare we say—her word—matured. Gone are the shows when she’d grab a flashlight and stab a cowering audience member with its probing beam and skewer him or her with her steely wit.

“You kind of get a little more sophisticated as the years go by,” she told the Press recently on the phone from her apartment in Chelsea. “You do things differently. I’m certainly not going to talk about…dating!”

Long Islanders who didn’t make her critically acclaimed run at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan over the winter holidays will get their chance to catch Bernhard on Saturday, April 13, at the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, which, she made clear, better not be a comedy club or “I’ll be calling my agents when I hang up and firing them!”

Despite her years in the business as a very funny performer—and an award-winning actor for her role as a stalker in Martin Scorsese’s dark classic, The King of Comedy, Bernhard says, “I never played comedy clubs on Long Island!” Those clubs are too small to encompass everything she does.

“I like to reveal more of myself, it’s more personal, it’s more global,” she says. “It kind of covers the whole landscape of culture that we all go through every day.”

She says she knows the Island—her uncle was a doctor in Merrick—and could find her way from Hauppauge to Patchogue “if I had to!” She’ll be performing her act, “I Love Being Me, Don’t You,” which has a little bit of everything, including her band, the Flawless Zircons.

As she put it, “It’s a big, fabulous, fun show that covers all the different bases of entertainment, from burlesque to cabaret to rock ‘n’ roll to comedy. It’s old school and post-modern, all put-together!”

In her show, she tells stories and sings, drawing “little bits and pieces” from Barbara Streisand, Carol Burnett, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and even Joni Mitchell and melding them “into my own musical, comedic sensibilities.”

Her albums include “I’m Your Woman,” “Excuses for Bad Behavior” and “Whatever It Takes.” She’s also performed with Chrissie Hinds, Cyndi Lauper and the Scissor Sisters.  On “Roseanne” she played Nancy Bartlett, the first openly gay character on a network sitcom. Recently she did another ground-breaking series, DTLA (short for Downtown Los Angeles), on the Logo cable network, and completed a stint on ABC’s “Neighbors.” But by all accounts, she first made her mark when she starred with Jerry Lewis and Robert Di Nero in “The King of Comedy,” which is getting a much welcome makeover in time for its 30th anniversary as it closes this year’s Tribeca Film Festival on April 27.

Working with Jerry Lewis, she told us, was “not easy but fabulous, you know…to observe him and get to be around his madness and brilliance.”

Not too long ago Andy Cohen, the dapper host of Bravo’s “Watch What Happens,” happily dubbed Bernhard the “Margaret Mead of Pop Culture,” and she didn’t contradict him. She was sitting next to Jane Fonda deconstructing the “Real Housewives” phenomenon. Although Fonda has done 28 workout-related videos and she’s done none, Bernhard doesn’t mind. “Do I look like somebody who would do a workout tape?” she smirks.

She will work up a sweat, though, when she plays Patchogue.

“I like new things and I like old things,” she says. “I like smart people and I like people who have trail-blazed and taken chances. Those are all my influences! And I try to bring that all together in a really compelling, entertaining night that people will walk away from going, ‘Wow! She took me someplace! She didn’t leave me in the lurch.’ That’s really what I attempt to do every time I step on stage.”

The Department of Motor Vehicles Traffic Violations Bureau was replaced by the Suffolk County Traffic and Parking Violations Authority, which handles non-criminal traffic and parking violations in Suffolk’s five western towns—except for villages that have their own courts.

The court is expected to generate up to $11 million annually in revenue from fines, most of which went straight to Albany under the old system.

Suffolk officials have said the new court will also reduce the backlog of unanswered and unpaid summonses.

Drivers issued parking or traffic tickets prior to April 1 must still answer the DMV. Only tickets issued after April 1 go through the new court.

Unanswered tickets may result in a driver’s license being suspended. A suspension termination fee may be due regardless of the verdict.

The new court is located in the H. Lee Dennison Building, 100 Veterans Memorial Hwy., Hauppauge. The new court’s phone number is 631-853-3800.

To answer a pre-April 1 ticket through the DMV after their bureau closes, contact any state-run Traffic Violations Bureau, call 518-474-0941 or visit the DMV website for more information.

Suffolk County police said Douglas Caldwell was driving his Nissan eastbound on Veterans Memorial Highway in Hauppauge when the vehicle lost control, entered the center divider, struck a tree and overturned shortly after 4 a.m. Sunday.

Witnesses unsuccessfully tried to pull him from the vehicle before Commack Fire Department firefighters got him out. Caldwell was critically injured and taken to Stony Brook University Medical Center, where he died six days later.

Fourth Squad detectives are continuing the investigation and ask anyone with information on the crash to call themat 631-854-8452.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone gives his second State of the County address in Hauppauge on Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone proposed streamlining government processes, warned of continued budget deficits and rallied for rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy during his second State of the County address Tuesday night.

Between reflecting on his first year in office and doling out accolades, the first-term Democrat spent a significant portion of his speech reinforcing to legislators his plan to sell the John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility in Yaphank—a local political hot potato. If its sale does not go through, explained Bellone, he’d be forced to close the facility.

“The state of our county is that we are rebuilding,” Bellone, the former Babylon Town Supervisor, said before a packed legislative chamber in Hauppauge. “This is a county that has faced challenges before and always emerged stronger.”

His address comes as Long Island waits for billions in federal Sandy aid dollars to begin flowing nearly four months after the historic storm that seriously strained government resources across the tri-state area.

Bellone also reiterated support for the police department’s shift toward focusing on recidivism reduction, intelligence-led policing and improving the monitoring of sex offenders after he appointed Commissioner Ed Webber.

Legis. John Kennedy Jr. (R-Nesconset), leader of the GOP minority, questioned Bellone’s management skills and whether the county exec’s quest to speed up government would mean bypassing the legal processes established in the county charter.

“It appears that were tripping over ourselves to save pennies, when dollars are flying out of the window,” said Kennedy, vowing to launch an inquiry into the recent record-setting blizzard in his 10-minute Republican response to Bellone’s hour-long speech.

“Despite all of the changes that we have made to make our government smaller and more efficient, we still have a significant structural deficit,” Bellone said, meaning Suffolk still has more annual bills than recurring revenues after cutting 700 county workers. “While we’ve made great progress, we still have a long way to go.”

Some of the relocated guests of Olympic Motor Lodge on Vanderbilt Motor Parkway were reported to include Hurricane Sandy families, but an American Red Cross spokesman said there was no indication that any of the guests they assisted were Sandy victims.

The Red Cross responded to the scene and met with eight people—a family of four, a family of three and one man—and discovered that they were already being assisted by the Department of Social Services, which put them up at another hotel, Red Cross spokesman Michael de Vulpillieres said.

The blaze, which is being investigated by Suffolk County Police Arson Squad detectives, broke out just after 8 p.m., police said. According to police, a guest in a second floor room admitted that he had fallen asleep while smoking and woke up to a burning mattress. He unsuccessfully tried to put out the fire, which spread to two adjacent rooms, police said.

The motel was evacuated as firefighters from Brentwood, Hauppauge, East Brentwood and Central Islip descended on the motel and extinguished the blaze.

There were no reported injuries, police said.

The motel had 17 occupied rooms at the time of the fire, police said. The motel sustained fire and water damage, police said, adding that the investigation is continuing.

The Red Cross confirmed that Olympic Motor Lodge wasn’t a designated motel for Sandy victims, de Vulipillieres said. He noted that some guests may have been working on Sandy response, and were never affected by the hurricane.

Craig Williams was indicted last month on a charge of leaving the scene of an accident with injuries, a felony. Judge Stephen Braslow set his bail at $25,000.

Newsday reported that prosecutors appointed Garden City-based attorney Stephen Scaring as a special prosecutor in the case because Williams’ father is an investigator with the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

Both the suspect and the victim, 23-year-old Thomas Wik, are from Nesconset.

Police have said the deadly crash occurred on Route 347 in the early morning hours of Saturday, Sept. 29.

Williams is due back in court March 22. He faces up to four years in prison, if convicted.

Gloria Montoya, 49, Commack, was driving a Honda Accord eastbound on the LIE near exit 51 when her car was rear-ended in the center lane by the dump truck that was merging from the right lane at 7:30 p.m., police said.  The Accord then struck the concrete center divider, a Toyota Solara in the HOV lane and a Dodge Magnum in the center lane, police said.

The driver of the Solara, 83-year-old William Broer of Hauppauge, was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital where he was listed in serious condition. Montoya was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip where she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.  The driver of the Magnum, 35-year-old Carlos Gonzalez of Central Islip, was not injured.

Police described the dump truck that fled the scene as a newer-model, clean silver or grey-colored vehicle.

Second Squad detectives are continuing the investigation and ask anyone who may have witnessed this incident or has information to contact them at 631-854-8252 or call anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS.  All calls will be kept confidential.