This is part one of a two part series.
William Park couldn’t remember his name, but he knew where he went to school because it was written on his football jersey. This would be the first of four concussions he would have in his 23 years of life.
Park, now a University of Memphis junior accounting major, was playing football at his eighth-grade jamboree. He lined up at defensive end as usual.
“Next thing I know my ass is on the ground, some guy just decided to truck me,” Park said. “I somehow managed to stumble over to the sideline, but I was still very dazed and confused. My coaches and parents took me to the hospital, and I couldn't remember my name. I knew where I went to school, because it was on my shirt, but there were a lot of things I just couldn't remember.”
A concussion is a brain injury that involves a short loss of normal brain function in response to a head injury. And there are various levels of concussions ranging from mild to severe. Concussion symptoms include but are not limited to: blurred vision, memory loss, dizziness and loss of balance.
At least 1.6 million people receive concussions each year, according to the Center for Disease Control. The CDC reported in 2010, over 52,000 people die from concussions each year, and there are over 275,000 hospitalizations due to concussions, and over 1.3 million visits to the emergency room each year.
Park would recover a few days after his football-related concussion, and while his parents let him finish his eighth-grade season of football, high school football was out of the question for Park.
“They were really concerned because the doctors said once you have one (concussion) it’s a slippery slope and you’re more likely to get another one,” Park said.
According to concussiontreatment.com, research suggests if someone has already received one concussion, they are 1-2 times more likely to receive a second one. If they've had two concussions, then a third one is 2-4 times more likely.
However, even without football, concussions would continue to find Park in other ways. Six years ago, he was riding dirt bikes with his friends, and Park tried to show off a little too much, and it resulted in his second concussion.
“I took it to about fourth or fifth gear on the street,” he said. “I hit a curve so I had hit my brakes, came down on my bike and slammed my head, and they had to take me to the hospital (again).”
Unfortunately, Park’s luck with concussions actually got worse. He suffered a third one while long-boarding on a steep hill.
“I figured I could get over the speed bump, and I ended up flying over the bump,” Park said. “I hit it when flying about 15 feet (in the air), and I hit my head pretty good on the pavement.”
His fourth and most recent concussion came two winters ago.
“I was clearing ice off the windshield without gloves on, so I went inside and I started running some warm water and I tried to warm up,” Park said. “I started to get light headed, and I passed out on the counter on the way down.”
The long-term effects of four concussions in 12 years have taken their toll on Park.
“I have to write things down a lot or else I have a hard time remembering things,” he said. “I have a hard time remembering, trying to form coherent thoughts a lot.”
Sam Watson, a U of M football player from 2012-13, said he remembers having at least two undiagnosed concussions in high school while playing at Tipton-Rosemark Academy.
“I’ve had several times where my vision got blurry and occasional headaches — at worst the most I had was a mild concussion,” Watson said. “I never got knocked out or anything.”
If left undiagnosed, a concussion may place a person at risk of developing second-impact syndrome, a potentially fatal injury that occurs when an athlete sustains a second head injury before a previous head injury has healed, according to the website of the Mayfield Clinic in Cincinnati.
Watson said it never occurred to him that he should’ve said something when feeling concussion symptoms.
“It didn't occur to me at the time that I should say something. I just thought you had to play football — it was just the way to do stuff,” Watson said. “I didn't think at any point in time I should come out (of the game). I thought it kind of just went along with playing football.”
Like Park, Watson said the concussions affect him today.
“I guess now sometimes things don't come as quickly as they did. I think slower than I used to,” Watson said.
Carol Irwin, a health and sport sciences associate professor at the U of M, was intrigued by concussions after her time as a K-12 coach in a variety of sports during the 1980s and 90s.
“I witnessed several close calls with concussions and probably some actual concussions,” Irwin said. “And as a coach it’s very difficult to tell which ones are going to be a huge problem and which ones are not — it’s so unknown.”
Irwin said she’s surprised it took so long for concussions to become a prominent discussion topic in the sports world, and the culture of sports has delayed the discussion for as long as it could.
“You know, very much like a chemical company realizing that their chemicals are poisoning the ground water,” Irwin said. “It takes legal action, lawsuits to finally have them realize we have to do business a different way. I think very slowly it’s changing the culture of sports.”
One of the reasons Irwin said doctors have struggled to learn how to treat concussions better is because the parents, coaches and athletes generally hide it.
“If an athlete says they have a concussion, it can hurt their chances of having a chance at a college scholarship,” Irwin said. “Coaches, in particular, want to hide it, because if that’s their star athlete and they have to pull them out of the game, that hurts their win/loss record.”
The tipping point in the conversation about concussions may have been in July 2014. The NFL reached a $765 million lawsuit agreement with the players, and as a result the league was allowed to keep all of the data and research they had about concussions locked away. The issues with concussions at the college and lower level schools are important, but it usually takes a big corporation like the NFL to get issues such as concussions in athletics brought to the forefront.
In addition, the NFL may be facing another threat to its multi-billion dollar empire.
Former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland announced his retirement from the NFL at the age of 24 in March after only one season in the league. Borland was diagnosed with two concussions prior to his NFL career: one while playing soccer in the eighth grade, the other while playing football as a sophomore in high school, and he said the risk of further head trauma was not worth it.
Irwin said she sees retirements of younger players like Borland becoming more of a trend, because players will start to understand there is more to life than just playing a game.
“You’ve got grandchildren, your whole life in front of you,” she said. “I don’t think people really understand that. I think (Borland) is an anomaly now, but that’s going to change. People who are 30 or 35 still think they’ve got that immortal gene, thinking they are going to last forever, and it’s not true.”
As far as the concussion discussion in the years to come, Irwin said the NFL and NCAA are letting science dictate it, because its their way of sitting back and putting the blame on the scientists, because science is working on it. But they are kind of in a dark room, and they don’t know where to go.
“There are a lot of unknowns,” Irwin said. “In the meantime, kids are getting hurt, and I think parents should have an understanding at this point if their child participates in high-impact sports, he or she might get a concussion and you might need to prepare for that. And then eventually when kids go into college or professional sports on their own, they are well educated. I think the education part is helping, but we need science, we need research to do more of its part to find out what’s going on.”
Junior accounting major William Park has received multiple concussions in his lifetime. These have led to some short-term memory loss. Sometimes Park writes down important details of anything in particular he needs to remember. Otherwise he may have no recollection.
Photo by Harrison Lingo
