I’ve endured my share of head knocks and a few to the point of momentary unconsciousness.
Some have come in recent years. My lack of mobility and the inability to step higher than a pencil has caused me to trip and, it seems, my Norwegian heritage causes me to lead with my noggin.
A particularly ominous fall in Sacramento before a basketball game one year left me with a torn labrum and rotator cuff injury that required surgery.
It also left me goofy enough that, after I realized I was being attended to by University of Montana Athletic Trainer Dennis Murphy in the team’s locker room, I had trouble remembering the names of the opponents the Grizzlies were playing.
But that is an adult situation, long after the days I played sports, when there was little that would keep me from competition.
After returning from the military I played junior college football and baseball with pins in my hips from a grade-school injury.
In those days in the ‘60s I don’t remember even hearing the word concussion and surely would not have let teammates think that a little slight lapse of consciousness and memory would cause me to leave the field.
The worst scenario that I can remember was blocking the plate in the first game of a double-header against the University of Washington in Seattle.
Making darn sure that the rampaging advancing base runner was not scoring on my watch, I made sure I initiated the contact when the ball and the base runner simultaneously arrived.
It is odd that you remember such details before the collision but little afterwards except for that nauseating clunk as the back of my head snapped to the ground.
Of course, now studies have revealed the danger of continuous hits to the head. While we have always realized that boxers often become “punch drunk” after sustained head blows, it hasn’t been very long that we have heard such things as concussion syndrome and protocol making their way into athletic discussions after recurring symptoms have devastated the lives of former players.
Predictably, because of the severity and velocity of the gridiron collision, the National Football League is at the forefront of trying to mitigate head injuries and protect players from life-altering injury by changing rules and researching safer equipment.
And the National Hockey League has instituted stringent rules to keep players off the ice after concussions.
The NCAA has acted similarly and UM has strict guidelines about how long the symptoms need to have subsided before a player can return to competition.
But with rule changes that keep an athlete from returning to competition comes some players’ predictable deniability.
And this goes to the most amateur level of competition and it’s as simple as telling an athletic trainer you didn’t lose consciousness in order to be able to get back on the field as soon as possible.
Such occurrences make it imperative that athletic trainers, and also parents, realize the seriousness and symptoms of such an injury and the dangers associated with additional injury.
Any rule change or equipment modification will not change the fact that most athletics involves contact, but being aware of the symptoms of a head injury in your youngster or your teammate could safe a life.