Want a mini helmet of your favorite high school team? This Wichita coach makes them

He has sent them as far as Italy and made them for high school football teams as small as Class 1A Sedgwick.

Jared McDaniel started creating replica mini helmets in 2012 to go with birth announcements for his coaching friends and as gifts for his senior football players. It is much more than that now.

He doesn’t do a lot of marketing or advertising, but through word of mouth, Hubby’s Helmets has gone from a hobby on this side of his coaching career to a potentially life-changing venture.

McDaniel was hired as the Trinity Academy football in coach in 2012 and held the position for a few years before the school decided to go another direction, McDaniel said. When it did, so did he with the helmets.

They took off.

“Since I’m not a head coach this year, I’ve got a little more time on my hands, so I put an email blast out to all the Kansas high school coaches,” McDaniel said. “The day after, I just kept getting texts and calls and emails. I texted my wife and said, ‘You ever done something that you thought was a good idea at the time?’

“It’s kind of out of control, but at the same time, it’s kind of fun.”

The process is simple, but the idea is brilliant. He shops around different mini helmet vendors, finds the best prices, buys the quantities he needs and prints out the schools’ exact logos after loading them into his decal machine.

The finished product is a helmet about the size of a softball that looks like what Wichita’s top teams trot onto the field with every Friday night.

McDaniel said he often gets asked, “Why do you do them?”

“To me, they’re like little pieces of art,” he said. “Each one is different, and I think that’s what I like about the high school ones the most. You get that piece of hometown in them a little bit.”

McDaniel has done helmets for more than a handful of Wichita area teams, including Andover, Douglass, Valley Center and Wichita North. He said his favorite is typically whichever he is working on.

He has sent them to the Kansas City area, Missouri and North Carolina. He said he has competitors around the U.S., but for $30-$35 a helmet, his customers won’t find better service.

“Probably the best way to describe me, I’m like the Dunder Mifflin of helmets,” said McDaniel, referring to the fictional company portrayed on “The Office.” “I can give you customer service, and I can give you a quality product.”

McDaniel is still a coach in the Wichita area. He is a teacher as part of the Sedgwick County Area Educational Services Interlocal Cooperative program, meaning he can go from Valley Center to Sedgwick or Mount Hope. He coached middle school football in Valley Center this year

He said he would consider accepting another head job again if the situation was right, but with the way Hubby’s Helmets has taken off, he has ambitions for that, too.

Taking a step back on the coaching side has allowed McDaniel to get his weekends back and spend more time with his family. The helmets have helped that as well.

McDaniel makes the helmets in his basement. His desk is set up on one side of the room, and his son’s Xbox is on the other. McDaniel said it’s nice to go down there and spend time with him while he is working.

“I guess I would kind of hope it would get to that point where it kind of takes over,” he said. “But I’ll cross that when it gets there.”