december 2015

8 Sports
Dazed and Confused
Concussions are in the news more than ever, and schools have their heads up
By Dan Albanese
Concussions. Horror stories are
everywhere. In just the past two calendar
years, four Syracuse University
football players have been medically
disqualified from playing football
following several head injuries. That
means they’ll never play football at
SU again.
The latest Syracuse player to be
disqualified is sophomore quarterback
AJ Long, whose college football
career ended only six games into the
2015-2016 season.
The NCAA defines a concussion
as “a change in brain function
following a force to the head, which
may be accompanied by temporary
loss of consciousness, but is identified
in awake individual by measures
of neurologic and cognitive dysfunction.”
Short-term symptoms include
headaches, blurred vision, nausea,
vomiting, confusion and trouble
concentrating. Long term symptoms
could include things as drastic as
memory loss, dementia, and in some
cases, CTE. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
is a progressive degenerative
brain disease first discovered
in NFL players that has helped raise
awareness of the dangers of concussions
at all levels of play.
Bonnie Adams, MPH’s Registered
Nurse, said concussions can
have vicious short- term and longterm
effects.
“There can be post-concussion
symptoms that go away after a few
weeks,” she said. “There are situations
where it is prolonged over a
month, and we’ve had the case where
it has been prolonged almost an entire
school year.”
With more than 7 million kids
playing sports, there’s more being
done now to keep kids safe than ever
before. New York state has a concussion
management protocol that all
public high schools are required to
follow. MPH follows the state guidelines,
even though it isn’t required
to as a private school. These protocols
help student-athletes who have
sustained a concussion transition
back to the classroom, as well as the
playing field, with reduced activity
and academic modifications.
Within the first four months of
school at MPH, three students have
sustained concussions.
“The short of it is they are not
allowed to participate or do anything
until they are cleared by their doctor,”
said MPH Athletic Director
Don Ridall.
MPH uses a five-day re-immersion
program to help students get
back into the classroom and onto
the field. Ridall said once a student
is cleared by their doctor, then the
protocol starts with limited activity
and leads up to full activity.
According to the CDC, 1.6 million
- 3.8 million concussions occurred
in 2012, double that reported
in 2002. According to the NCAA,15
percent of students-athletes reported
experiencing a concussion or what
they thought was a concussion.
Cady Ridall, an MPH senior,
suffered a concussion last year after a
kicked ball hit her in the head during
a soccer game.
“My initial reaction was a lightsout
sort of thing,” she said in an
email. “I fell to the ground instantly
and blacked out for a brief few seconds.
My coach, Ms. B, asked me,
‘Are you okay?’ And I remember
Photo courtesy of Concussion mechanics.svg
responding, ‘I think so.’ Tears were
running down my face but I don’t
remember feeling too much pain because
I think I was in so much shock.
I actually went back into the game
and continued to head the ball.”
Don Ridall said concussions have
only come to the foreground of discussion
within the past several years.
“I think what really put the
movement on has been football,” he
said. “Starting from the top to the
bottom, you’ve been seeing more
football players that have been getting
concussions and they’re going back
too soon and causing brain damage
and injury, and in some cases possibly
death, because there was no
protocol there.”
The NFL recently settled a classaction
lawsuit with thousands of former
players who claimed the league
hid the dangers of concussions. Since
then, the NFL has said it is dedicated
to implementing rules and protocols
to help keep players safe.
A new movie, “Concussion,”
starring Will Smith, is an adaptation
of the events that led Dr. Bennet Omalu
to discover the first documented
cases of CTE in ex-NFL players and
Omalu’s critical comments of the
NFL’s handling of brain injuries.
The movie, which will be released
on Christmas, has not been without
controversy of its own. According to
The New York Times, leaked emails
revealed that Sony executives altered
some scenes in the movie to avoid
antagonizing the NFL.
CTE is described by the Center
for Disease Control as progressive
degeneration of the brain with symptoms
like memory loss, depression,
thoughts of suicide, and, eventually,
progressive dementia. There’s news
all the time of ex-football players
who suffer from brain damage and
have become shells of their former
selves. Three years ago, NFL legend
Junior Seau shot himself in the chest.
This may seem like a strange occurrence,
but this is not the first time a
former NFL player has committed
suicide with a shot to the chest rather
than the head. Seau sensed that there
was something wrong, and wanted
his brain to be studied.
The healthy brain of a 65 year old man v.s. a brain affected by CTE.
Dave Duerson, the star safety for
the 1985 NFL champion Chicago
Bears took his life in 2011 by shooting
himself in the chest. Examinations
of both players’ brains revealed
they suffered from CTE.
Researchers in the Department
of Veteran Affairs at Boston University
discovered traces of CTE in the
post-mortem brains of 96 percent of
NFL player brains they examined
in 2015. In total, the research group
found full-blown CTE in the brains
of 131 out of 165 individuals who
played football, ranging from the
professional level to high school.
The NFL isn’t the only major
sports organization enacting changes
to help players. The United States
Soccer Federation recently unveiled
new protocol banning children under
age 10 from heading the ball. Players
are also taking notice of the problem.
U.S Soccer’s Ali Krieger wore a headband
manufactured to help prevent
concussions during international
matches in the World Cup this past
summer. Two girls’ soccer players
at MPH also wear concussion headbands.
At the college level, the NCAA
is also working to keep athletes safe.
Brad Pike, Assistant Athletic Director
for Sports Medicine at Syracuse
University, said the NCAA developed
its concussion guidelines in
2014-2015.
Pike said SU has worked hard to
implement policies to help students
transition back to the classroom and
back to athletics. This past summer,
Pike re-wrote SU’s concussion-management
policy in part to meet the
NCAA’s standards on the return-tolearn
policy and in part just to take a
stronger stance overall.
“A part of our concussion policy
is we have a return-to-classroom,
or a return-to-learn program,” Pike
said. “Basically anybody who gets
a documented concussion by our
doctor, we send a note over to our
learning specialist, who has a liaison
to the Office of Disability Services,
and we’ll make sure that the Office
of Disability Services will help assess
the student-athlete and monitor their
return.”
Pike said if a player gets a concussion,
he or she is out of action,
even practice, for several days until
the player is 100 percent symptom
free.
“Well you can’t put a finite [number],”
he said. “Typically I’d say the
least amount would be a week. Basically
you have to be symptom-free
before you can go into our returnto-play
protocol, so whenever your
symptoms clear, it’s going to take at
least between six or seven days to get
through that progressive return to
play protocol.”
Pike also said that too many
people associate concussions with
only football.
“Everybody wants to just say
football, football, football with concussions,”
he said, “but concussions
happen in all sports.”
Photo courtesy of MPH
Jordan Dunaway-Barlow is one of
two MPH players who wear concussion
headbands while playing soccer.