Brianna Campbell / The Collegian
Laying face down, hazily glaring at a thousand blades of grass as if they were stars all the while having little or no recollection of how and why they are there.
This is an experience a number of football players endure after suffering a devastating hit, and possibly a concussion. Research on cognitive function, from earlier this year, has changed the way many teams handled possible head injuries.
Last football season, star running back Ryan Matthews took a severe hit and suffered a concussion in the first half of a game against Nevada.
Tony Hill, head athletic trainer for the football team, is entering his third season coordinating the football’s health care unit. Hill said he has seen approximately five concussions with the football team, with the only concussion occurring in a game being Matthews’.
“Basically, we assessed him on the field, got him to the sideline, then put him through a more thorough exam,” Hill said. “We then got back to the locker room and let him gather himself.”
Hill said this is the typical procedure for players who have suffered a tremendous hit on the field. Matthews missed the rest of the Nevada game and had to sit out the next game a week later.
“It was a good grade-two concussion,” Hill said. “He had significant memory loss for a while after the injury and that’s pretty common. But you knew it wasn’t just a ding. A lot of guys will get confused; headaches for ten minutes, then everything will be back after thirty minutes. I asked Ryan a few days after and he had little recollection of that first and second half.”
When a serious concussion is obvious, the training staff takes more thorough steps to evaluate a player’s health and ability to return to the field.
“We usually put them under a 48-hour observatory period where they don’t do anything,” Hill said. “We check in with them once or twice a day and see how they’re doing and then after that we give them the ImPACT Test.”
The ImPACT Test is a neurocognitive computer test football players take before they even start practice as a Bulldog football player. This way, the training staff has a baseline of each player’s healthy test that can be used to compare with a test taken after a head injury.
Often, using the word concussion can often lead to some confusion, with many people not understanding what a concussion is, athletic training program coordinator Scott Sailor said.
“The myth regarding concussions is that you don’t have a concussion unless you lose consciousness,” Sailor said. “A concussion is a brain injury that can vary in severity, from real mild, to where individuals describe it as getting their bell rung, very severe with symptoms lasting months to years.”
The symptoms of a concussion can be devastating if overlooked.
Sailor said researchers are finding long-term problems that players develop from concussion, such as cognitive function losses.
“Even some situations where researchers are feeling there could be links to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s,” Sailor said. “There could be precursors that lead to a higher rate to those conditions.”
Sailor said more need to realize how serious a hit to the head can be.
“I think one of our big jobs about sports safety and health care is really educating the public,” Sailor said. “There is still the mentality ‘I just got my bell rung and I’ll be OK’ and we realize now, getting your bell rung is a bad deal and it could lead to a lot of issues.”
Some of the health issues caused by concussions are tragic even when compared to other sports injuries.
“We tend to focus on blown out knees and shoulders,” Sailor said. “Arthritis in your shoulder isn’t anything compared to not being able to remember your kids’ names.”
Hill has been around the country, and said he is concerned about the safety of athletes at high schools around California.
“This whole issue of concussions has come about because a lot of kids don’t have athletic trainers on the field, and they don’t see a doctor,” Hill said. “They get a concussion, and go back to practice and they get another concussion on top of that before the brain has healed. You can get severe sub-dermal hematoma and die.”
Hill was talking about Second-Impact Syndrome (SIS), which has caused numerous deaths around the country. Sailor is also concerned about the dangers multiple concussions can have.
“Second-Impact Syndrome, when it occurs, has right around a 50-percent mortality rate,” Sailor said. “Getting a second concussion when a patient has not completely recovered from the first concussion. One of the big areas we’re working on more accurately identifying.”
Hill said the head injuries are more serious for high school kids, because their brains are still growing.
Sailor added that there is legislation pending that will force schools to take the steps necessary to prevent more tragic head injuries. Assembly Bill 1646 would force coaches to have athletic-injury training and Assembly Bill 1647 would allow schools to have a larger medical staff to help with injuries.