Sat Feb 11 2012
Dylan Quinn never saw the hit – doesn’t even remember it – but he’s been dealing with its after-effects for two weeks now.
The play occurred during the second quarter of Frankfort High’s regular season finale against Danville. Facing a third-and-long, Quinn dropped back to throw and aired out a deep pass down the middle of the field to Kaleb Leach which fell incomplete.
Most in attendance followed the flight of the ball. Few saw Quinn crumple to the ground after a vicious hit by an unblocked Admiral from Quinn’s blindside.
“I didn’t even see it,” Quinn said. “They hit me helmet to helmet and took me to the ground.”
Quinn sat on the sidelines for the rest of the game in a fog. He felt tired. He was seeing double. He vomited three times.
“I don’t remember the first half,” he said.
All signs indicated a concussion, the classic athletic head injury that has received plenty of national headlines as of late.
In light of a growing body of research documenting the declining mental health of former professional football players, Congress held a hearing last month attended by NFL representatives to discuss football brain injuries, their short- and long-term effects and what is being done to protect the health of players.
A mounting body of evidence has linked repeated head trauma to depression, dementia and other psychiatric conditions. Not to mention headaches and memory loss.
A greater concern perhaps than the risks assumed by multimillionaire athletes is the health of the 1.2 million teenagers that participate in high school football each year. Players like Dylan Quinn.
According to research conducted at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, 400,000 concussions occurred in high school athletics during the 2008-09 school year with football having more incidences than any other sport.
Most young athletes that receive proper care and take proper precautions make full recoveries from severe head injuries, according to a March 2009 study published in Pediatrics. However, one out of every four children in the study experienced “significant post-concussive symptoms.”
It’s new research like this that weighs heavily on the mind of FHS trainer Shawnda Ebert when caring for a player who has sustained a head injury.
“It’s a bruise of the brain,” Ebert said. “When your brain hits your skull you may not have immediate signs of a concussion.
“It’s like if you get kicked in the leg, you may not see a bruise immediately, but after a day or so you’ll see a bruise.”
Ebert said she’s treated five concussions this season for the Panthers, including Quinn’s, but suspects other head injuries have occurred.
“A lot of kids may not come and tell you they got their ‘bell rung’ because they don’t want to sit out,” she said.
Ebert said she has a test she administers to players in the days following a concussion and holds them out of practice until they pass it 100 percent.
“I have a rule that as long as you have symptoms, you’re not playing,” she said.
“You’ve got to go a few days symptom-free before I let you get a helmet on and go back out there because you have such a high risk of post-concussion syndrome and ultimately you can die from it.”
Quinn said he experienced headaches and some nausea the week after the Danville game. He sat out of practice and didn’t dress for Frankfort High’s first-round playoff game.
He said this is his third concussion playing football, the other two came as a youth playing FYFL football.
“I’d say this was the worst one,” Quinn said.
During the week leading up to the Panthers’ playoff game, Quinn admitted he thought about ignoring his headaches and saying he was good to go – at least until he sat down with a doctor who explained the possible ramifications should he return to the field too soon.
“I never realized how serious they could be,” Quinn said.
Plenty of solutions have been kicked around regarding the prevention of head injuries in football. The hard, plastic helmet – an innovation designed to eliminate head trauma – becomes part of the problem when players lead with the head on tackles, a technique that is coming under increased scrutiny at the higher levels of the game.
For this reason, people have proposed bulking up helmets, adding pads to the outside of helmets, or – here’s a novel idea – eliminating the helmet completely.
Violence is part of football, however. And the risk of head injury may never by fully eliminated from the game.
This week, Quinn finally got back into the pads and under center. He threw to receivers on Tuesday and was allowed to fully participate at practice on Wednesday in preparation for Frankfort High’s second-round matchup against Bellevue.
“I’m just ready to get back in there,” he said. “It was hard standing on the sidelines watching my teammates play without me.”
But before stepping on the field Friday an equipment change may be in order. Quinn cut his curly locks earlier in the week, and he needs a snug helmet should his cranium crash into contact again.
“I’m at a large now,” he said. “I might need a medium.”
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