The path back from concussions

“There’s really no feeling like it.”

Senior quarterback Jonathan Walters stands a few feet away from the open door of physics teacher Matt Welander’s classroom. As he shifts his weight back and forth, he begins to describe his first concussion. 

“I was running into the endzone and I got [hit] by another player,” Walters said. “My head was spinning … It’s just a nightmare because there’s nothing you can do.”

Walters, one of the team’s star players and co-captains, was first diagnosed with a concussion after Saratoga High’s Sept. 20 game against Willow Glen. Although Saratoga won the match, Walters paid a price for it.

“I didn’t celebrate after I got the touchdown,” Walters said.

The following morning, Walters woke up to intense dizziness. He was forced to spend the next two to three weeks working his way through the recovery process and told to avoid watching TV and using his computer and phone.  

According to athletic trainer Liz Gilmore Alves, the emotional impacts of a concussion can be severe. 

“A lot of people end up depressed because you’re taking away everything they like,” Alves said. “Unfortunately, depression symptoms can mimic concussion symptoms.”

The first step is waiting for all of the athlete’s symptoms to go away, said Alves. Afterwards, he must retake a cognitive test, and Alves compares Walters’ current numbers to his preseason results. 

“[The test] is not an exact tool of whether you have a concussion or not, but at least it gives [Alves] something to work with,” said head varsity coach Tim Lugo. “If we see scores down in certain areas, we’ll hold kids out of practice.”

Finally, as Walters put it, the recovering athlete can “take little baby steps [towards playing again].” Starting with working out on the stationary bike, Walters progressed toward using the elliptical, running and going back to football.

During his recovery process, one positive aspect Walters recalls is the high level of support he received from his peers. 

“They understood my situation,” he said. “People were telling me to just relax. Coach Lugo told me to go home a couple times during practice because he just wanted me to get better.” 

Walters returned to the football field on Oct. 11 to play against Milpitas. Luckily, by that time, he was fully recovered and suffered no second injury. However, as a result of his concussion, he said, Lugo asked him change his playing style slightly; he is now supposed to “slide, instead of [trying] to run people over.”

Despite the difficulties Walters faced as a result of his concussion, he stated adamantly that he would not change anything about his football career. 

“[Before joining football], I knew there was a risk, obviously, but … it’s hard to prevent something like that,” Walters said. “[Concussions are one] of the [game’s] setbacks, [but they’re] a small part.”

However, playing the sport may have a lasting impact on athletes. When an athlete gets a concussion, he becomes more likely to receive a subsequent, more severe concussion, Alves said. 

The number of concussions Alves has seen over the years has increased, though Alves stated that may be due to a greater level of awareness —  athletes who would have shrugged off a headache a decade ago are now often prompted by teammates to see a doctor.

“I didn’t even know [Walters] had the concussion during the game he got it,” Lugo said. “He didn’t say anything about it after the game. It was one of [his teammates] that went up to [Alves] and said, ‘I think you need to check him.’” 

Even with the top safety equipment, Alves noted, football players are still at risk of a concussion. However, it is a risk that that many players are willing to take, even those who are aware of the possible consequences.

In addition, football isn’t the only sport with a high concussion risk. Many other popular high school sports, including basketball and soccer, make up the more than 136,000 concussions U.S. high school students experience every academic year, according to the Center for Disease Control and Mayo Clinic. 

The school’s situation mirrors the “concussion crisis,” as dubbed by PBS, surrounding the National Football League (NFL). As concussions receive more media attention, and athletes and spectators become more familiar with the injury’s risks, pressure on the NFL to respond to the problem with reforms has increased.

The negative effects of concussions are well documented; according to neuropsychologist Maryse Lassonde, Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neuropsychology at the Université de Montréal, she and other researchers have observed “abnormal brain wave activity for years after a concussion, as well as partial wasting away of motor pathways.”

More significantly, these effects do not go away with time. Lassonde found athletes who had suffered head trauma 30 years prior often suffered symptoms of early Parkinson’s disease, thinning of the cortex as in Alzheimer’s disease, and memory and attention deficits. Concussions are often linked with later diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disorder that causes degeneration of brain tissue and result in dementia, depression, and more. 

This past August, the NFL agreed to pay $765 million for “injury settlements, medical monitoring, and care for former players who suffered concussions and other brain injuries,” according to the Huffington Post. 

This problem isn’t going away. According to PBS, around 180 incidents of brain trauma are recorded every season in the NFL. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at Boston University, found that 33 of 34 brains of former NFL players suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). 

Despite the possible long-term effects, the reality is that athletes, like Walters, will continue to play the sports they love. In his own words: “Concussions are a small part of football, and it is still one of the greatest games ever played.”