The 45 minutes that redshirt freshman Tommy Tombridge spent in goal during the second half of Northwestern’s manic 4-3 win at Wisconsin were far from inconsequential.
There were two lead changes, two draws, three goals in less than five minutes – one coming off an NU penalty kick in the last minute of regulation to push the match into overtime – and six shots on net that Tombridge was charged with stopping.
But Tombridge doesn’t remember any of it.
Not the goals NU scored nor the saves he was forced to make, thanks to a concussion that he sustained during halftime warm-ups.
“I don’t remember the first half at all, or the second half,” Tombridge said. “Or the rest of the night. It was my first concussion and the scariest part is that I played 45 minutes without remembering any of it.”
To make matters more surreal, Tombridge is not the only keeper whose recollection of the game - which marked coach Tim Lenahan’s 100th win – is more than a little fuzzy. Tombridge only entered the match because the usual starter, junior keeper Drew Kotler, had also sustained a concussion during the first half of play.
“I don’t remember this, but they made me do the months backward,” Kotler said. “Apparently I said, ‘December, September, October, September.’ That was a clue something was wrong.”
Heightened awareness
It would be easy to write off the double-concussion incident at Wisconsin as some sort of cruel fluke. After all, soccer is a sport that doesn’t have the head-banging status of football, nor the jaw-breaking vibrato of hockey. It’s a game that requires no more protection than a pair of shin guards and, for a long time, was saddled with a jeering “no contact” label.
But the data suggest otherwise. According to a survey released by the Datalys Center, which compiles and analyzes injuries in the NCAA, there were 2,232 reported concussions from 2004 to 2009 in NCAA men’s soccer, accounting for 6.2 percent of all injuries in the sport. Among fall sports, men and women’s soccer is second only to football in total concussions.
NU has recorded three just this season, all of which have sidelined the affected players since they sustained their injuries.
“The athletes in this game are getting stronger, faster and bigger across the board,” Lenahan said. “Especially in this conference, anyone who’s been around long enough is going to get their bell rung. Now, though, we are a lot more sensitive to that sort of thing than we were in the past.”
In April, the NCAA tightened its concussion guidelines across the board, most notably mandating that no athlete be allowed to return to play on the same day that they demonstrate concussion-like symptoms.
“Concussions don’t just happen in football anymore,” said clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Elizabeth Pieroth, who is the head injury/concussion consultant to NU athletics as well as the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks. “The important thing about these guidelines is that they acknowledge that concussions are a problem across the board in all sports. Soccer is certainly one of those sports that has a lot of risk associated with it because it is so physically demanding.”
A shattered dream
It’s a gamble that former NU goalie Misha Rosenthal knows all too well, and he continues to pay the price even after not playing for more than a year.
Rosenthal is, even by his own account, not exactly the poster child for following concussion protocol. He suffered his first concussion as a 12-year-old youth soccer player and, since then, said he has suffered six more that were diagnosed.
Five of those came while playing for NU, where he shattered the school record for shutouts.
“There’s a sort of commitment level to the team that I had,” Rosenthal said. “And, at our age, there was maybe a lack of maturity when it came to self-reporting.”
After suffering two serious concussions in the 2009 offseason, Rosenthal decided, at his parents’ request, to wear a protective helmet while playing.
“There’s definitely a stigma attached with wearing one,” Rosenthal said. “But it gave me more of a drive because people probably saw it and didn’t take me too seriously.”
Unfortunately for Rosenthal, the helmet did not make the concussions stop, and in the middle of last season he was forced to come to terms with the fact that his soccer career would not extend beyond college. He said he still suffers from vertigo, among other symptoms.
“It became pretty clear to me that I had no other choice but to give it up,” Rosenthal said. “I have suffered and continue to suffer those consequences of the concussions. I’m still not 100 percent.”
It’s the sort of choice that NU athletics head physician Dr. Carrie Jaworski hopes that increased press and the tightened guidelines will keep players from being forced to make in the future.
In the past, Jaworski said trainers talked with players who came off the field with concussion-like symptoms about the greater risks associated with playing through the injury.
“We (were) asking them how important it is to them to get a job in the future. Or maybe, depending on where they were in their career, how about being able to play the next game,” she said. “Now we don’t have to do the convincing.”
Check yourself
The missing link in many cases, though, is one that neither the NCAA nor the team physicians can connect: self-reporting.
Sometimes a concussion is obvious, like when sophomore center back Jarrett Baughman suffered one against Ohio State on Oct. 10. In possibly the scariest 20 minutes of the season, the game was stopped while Baughman lay motionless on the ground. He came back to the field after the game to celebrate with his teammates, but he has not played since the incident.
For the most part though, a concussion isn’t the sort of injury that always makes itself readily apparent. So much of the onus is on players to talk to coaches or trainers if they experience symptoms, Jaworski said.
At the beginning of the season, all Big Ten athletes were required to sign an injury and illness acknowledgment form, of which the entire second paragraph is devoted to making athletes aware of the potential for head injuries and their responsibilities for reporting them.
When Kotler sustained his concussion at Wisconsin, he made good on that promise and came out at halftime.
“Until now in soccer … concussions weren’t really well-diagnosed or well-looked after,” Kotler said. “And I know it still happens where people will underreport, but I think people understand the gravity of the situation now, that it’s not something that you can mess around with.”
At the start of the year, NU athletes must go through a concussion training system, and this fall Jaworski visited each team personally to talk about the importance of self-reporting.
Each athlete is also required to undergo the ImPACT test, which measures responses across five different fields of memory and reaction. When an athlete undergoes a concussion, they must take the test again and their levels are compared before they can return to practice or competition.
“It helps them to really see the data behind what we’re telling them,” Jaworski said. “That way they know that it’s real, that there’s a real problem.”
For Kotler, the wait paid off, and after more than two weeks he has been given the go-ahead to play Thursday against Penn State.
Still, Kotler isn’t convinced of the benefit of wearing a helmet like Rosenthal’s.
“I’d rather not have that there reminding me that I should be careful of my head,” Kotler said. “I’ve had one concussion in a thousand games of playing. I don’t think I need it.”
