Concussions damage brains, change personalities

By JOE CATULLO Jr.

TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

OF all injuries athletes suffer, concussions have gotten the most attention in the past few years.

“Any injury is the worst injury for an athlete. Even at the most minor level, an injury takes you out of your game,” said Cynthia Zordich, photographer and co-author of “When the Clock Runs Out,” which profiles 20 National Football League players.

She is also the wife of Michael Zordich, a Youngstown native who played for 12 years as a cornerback in the NFL and coached at Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown and the Philadelphia Eagles before being tapped as the safeties’ coach for the Youngstown State University Penguins.

“Concussions are at their most dangerous when they are ignored,” Cynthia Zordich said.

A concussion is a traumatic brain injury caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s a very hot topic, and I don’t know where it goes from here,” said Eric Wolford, YSU head football coach. “Is it a situation where we are going to have more protective helmets? Are we going to start limiting any kind of helmet contact?

“It’s a concern in the NFL,” Wolford said. “It’s a concern in college. It’s a concern in high school. I honestly don’t know what the solution is.”

Concussions & consequences

“It’s a brain injury. That’s how you think. That’s how you talk. That’s what makes your body move,” said Brandon Slater, a Canton native and former defensive tackle at Baldwin Wallace University, Berea.

“Your brain is one of the most-important organs, obviously, because it’s what makes you who you are,” Slater said. “When you damage that, you change who you are.”

The adult brain weighs 3 pounds and “floats” inside the skull. The cerebral spinal fluid surrounding it acts as a shock absorber for minor impacts. The fluid, however, can’t do that when the brain moves too rapidly. That’s when concussions occur.

Of all sports, football is the most discussed and researched. Head-on-head collisions, falling on the field, full-speed contact and many other scenarios create potential for concussions.

Slater played his final season for Baldwin Wallace in 2013. He suffered two concussions during his collegiate career. He didn’t tell anyone about the first. His trainers, however, took him out of a team practice and did a baseline test.

When Slater got a second concussion, he knew he needed help – immediately.

“The second one, I had taken a hit to the head,” Slater said. “My neck kind of cracked back and didn’t feel right afterward. The next day was when it really set in. I had nap time during the day. I couldn’t sleep, and my head felt like it was going to explode.”

Headlines and awareness

Football ranks second, behind bicycling, for the most sports-related concussions from 1997 to 2012, according to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, operated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

During the 16-year stretch, there were 476,483 emergency-room visits by athletes for football-related concussions. That’s an average of 29,780 a year.

With modern technology, concussions are easier to track. Increased awareness is part of a nationwide trend. Twenty years ago, people didn’t view the risk as they do today.

An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll in January found that 40 percent of parents nationwide would steer their children away from football due to concerns about concussions. The number increased to 47 percent for parents from households with incomes of about $75,000.

In August 2013, former players filed a lawsuit against the NFL saying the league failed to disclose the dangers of head trauma. Last week, a federal judge in Philadelphia approved a landmark deal that would compensate thousands of former NFL players for concussion-related claims.

The judge approved the deal after the NFL agreed to remove a $765 million cap on damages. The settlement is designed to last at least 65 years and cover retirees who develop Lou Gehrig’s disease and other neurological problems. The players had originally asked for nearly $2 billion.

Then, there were the suicides.

Retired all-pro linebacker Junior Seau, who suffered from a degenerative brain disease, died in 2012. He had shot himself in the chest. Seau’s death followed the suicides of two other former NFL players, Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling. Both said their years in football had resulted in a deteriorating mental state.

Other sports, concussions

Football isn’t the only professional sport with high concussion rates.

Baseball ranks fifth, averaging 11,657 in the 16-year span. According to Major League Baseball statistics, teams used the seven-day concussion disabled list 18 times last season — 13 more times than in 2012.

“You’re talking neurological things with the brain, the head, trauma and things like that,” said Steve Gillispie, YSU’s baseball manager. “I think it used to be an accepted part of sports, and I’m sure guys had undiagnosed concussions for years and years.”

New rules and regulations have been introduced to prevent concussions in baseball. Beginning this season, collisions at home plate are banned. And there’s talk of pitchers wearing helmets or at least putting on more padding.

Back in his playing days, Gillispie never had a concussion, or at least he thinks so. The same is true for Wolford.

On the other hand, Jack Loew knows he had at least six during his playing days. He owns Loew’s South Side Boxing Club and trained Kelly Pavlik, the now- retired former middleweight champion.

Loew had his first concussion while playing football during freshman year in high school. He didn’t realize it until the bus ride on Canfield Road after the game.

“I remember to this day looking at the Dairy Queen, and it was just all blurry,” Loew said.

“I went back to [Cardinal] Mooney, took a shower, never said nothing to nobody, went home, and by Monday, I was good to go. It’s just how it was.”

All of Loew’s concussions resulted from football. As a boxer and trainer for the past 24-plus years, Loew said he thinks concussions are not a major issue in amateur boxing.

“I think the misconception when [people] hear the word boxing is these kids get pounded in the head,” Loew said. “They end up with concussions, they all end up brain dead, everyone can’t speak — it’s not true. I don’t think the impact of concussions has really hit amateur boxing because it’s so protected, as most amateur sports are.”

Though Loew believes amateurs are safe for now, professional boxing is different — even though boxing doesn’t make the list of the top 30 causes of sports-related injuries.

Pavlik suffered many concussions, Loew said, explaining that anybody who fights at that level and has been through the kind of fights Pavlik endured would definitely have had concussions. Loew said he’s seen concussions on every fight card, with at least one or two diagnosed with a concussion out of every 12 to 14 boxers.

“Everything today is more modernized, more protective for the athlete, and especially in this sport because our job is to teach a guy to hit this guy in the head and knock them out,” Loew said.

“It’s terrible to say it like this, but it is, and that’s what boxing is about.”

Hockey ranks 12th on the sports-related list with 5,695 emergency-room concussion visits a year. Anthony Noreen suffered one during his first year of junior hockey in 2001. Noreen is head coach of the Youngstown Phantoms, a U.S. Hockey League team.

He said the process was somewhat similar to but not as extensive as the computerized testing used now.

“I actually played through the rest of the game,” Noreen said. “[It was] probably my fault because I was trying to be tough in a tight game. I knew something was wrong. I would have blurry vision and things like that, but I did, unfortunately, play the rest of the game.”

Zach Humphries, a YSU graduate student, got a concussion in 2007 after playing hockey without protective gear on a friend’s frozen lake in Austintown. He spent 24 hours in a hospital and didn’t get his full memory back until three days later.

“My aunt walked in, and I had no idea who she was,” he said.

Concussion risks increase

When an athlete is diagnosed with a concussion, he or she is at greater risk for getting another one. According to the Sports Concussion Institute, with locations in California and Georgia, an athlete is one to two times more likely to receive a second concussion, two to four times more likely for a third, and three to nine times for a fourth.

Despite medical advances, diagnosing concussions is still be difficult.

“It’s harder to diagnose concussions because a lot of it is coming from the thoughts of an athlete, so they could be lying to you about how they feel,” said Jim Schroeder, head athletic trainer for the Phantoms. “In that case, second impact is more detrimental than the initial concussion, and that’s what we’re seeing in the NFL and other sports.”

Though modern technology and advanced research help to prevent concussions, they can’t eradicate them. No matter what the statistics indicate, everybody in sports is at risk.

“Future generations will look back and be appalled at our stupidity, just like we look back on our mothers who smoked during pregnancy,” Cynthia Zordich said. “But they didn’t know any better, and neither did we. It’s now a smarter game and a smarter player.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaborative effort among the Youngstown State University journalism program, The University of Akron, Cuyahoga Community College and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio of Akron.