Concussion: A Game Changer

Playing It Safe

By Steve Calechman

“You only get one brain,” he says. “You can’t replace it.”

Taylor Twellman suffered a concussion in 2008 when he ran into a goalie while playing for the New England Revolution. The lingering effects forced the one-time Major League Soccer MVP to retire last year at age 30. Today, more than two and a half years after the brain injury, Twellman still deals with headaches and occasional fatigue.

It wasn’t his only concussion. He had seven diagnosed over 17 years of playing soccer. The first came at 14.

Twellman tried to play through the 2008 injury because soccer was his job and, as a star player, he was the face of the New England Revolution. As a result, the concussion went untreated for too long, ultimately ending his career.

That, he says, is why no child should feel pressured by the “suck it up” attitude that still exists in youth and professional sports today

“You only get one brain,” he says. “You can’t replace it.”

Concussions have always been a risky side effect of sports. But they’ve gotten a lot more attention in the last five years. Check a newspaper or sports news website and there are seemingly daily items on the latest athletes struggling with concussions. Sidney Crosby in hockey. Lindsey Vonn in skiing. Justin Morneau in baseball.

As professional sports leagues try to formulate policy on how to best deal with the injury in their athletes, states are following suit to protect kids – who are more vulnerable to concussion’s dangers of brain swelling, permanent brain damage and even death. Currently, 14 states have a sports concussion law, which may require that an athlete must removed from play with a suspected concussion and not allowed to return without written medical clearance and that school sports and medical staff complete concussion-specific training. (See SportsConcussions.org to learn if your state has a consussion law.)