When you watch football, sometimes you’ll see an injured player or the announcers talking about an event that may have occurred. This is actually way more prevalent when it comes to high school level football. Concussions this year are at a high this year. Recently multiple players on the Centennial Football team have suffered concussions and a lot of them have a history of concussions.
On September 20th, our team captain Jaedon Head, who has had a history of mild concussions, had gone for a block and ended up going head to head with another player. This led to him feeling like he had a headache and not being able to think straight for a short period of time. He’s not the only person with this experience. Several other players have also been diagnosed with a concussion or show signs of having one.
Luke Chambers (Junior, running back and kick returner) started a concussion protocol for a game he played on September 20th. He took multiple headshots when running the ball in that game. Luke said after the game, he really only had a headache and felt kind of dehydrated not realizing he was showing concussion symptoms.
Sometimes people don’t realize they even have a concussion till a day or two later. Luke stated “I wrestle and cut weight a lot, so I’m used to the dehydrated feeling. At first I just felt I was dehydrated.” Then about a day after, he started to feel nauseous and had blurry vision, and signs of a concussion. He went and saw the school trainer. He was unable to play for 11 days and that he won’t realize when it’s safe to return to the field. Luke said “You can feel fine for a couple of days then the littlest things, like loud noises and bright lights, can spark it back up and make you feel symptoms again.”
Concussions are one of the most common football injuries and some people don’t realize they have a concussion till days later. Colleges can sometimes look at these injuries and make the assumption that this player could be injury prone, making college coaches wary of offering scholarships. Having multiple concussions can also impact your health by getting Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) or brain bleeds in turn making it so you can potentially lose your football career. Multiple NFL players have ended their careers due to unfortunate head injuries like concussions making it one of the scariest aspects of football.