HEROES ALL AROUND; #49 JAKE WILSON played injured only to further injure himself, but one thing he won't suffer from is regret.
A SPECIAL REPORT ON THE IMPACT OF HEAD INJURIES
(Contributing author; ENFORCER ATHLETIC TRAINER: ALICE DAVIS)
Courage; By definition it states : quality of being brave: the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen coarse of acton (Encarta World dictionary).
Your ENFORCER NATION has a simular definition…
Courage; (n), See TONY DAVID.
Synonyms: mettle (See AARON HOXIE) suggests an ingrained capacity for meeting strain or difficulty with fortitude and resilience, spirit (See WILSON UELIGITONE)also suggests a quality of temperament enabling one to hold one’s own or keep up one’s morale when opposed or threatened, resolution (See JOHN CARROLL) stresses firm determination to achieve one’s ends, tenacity (See JASON BURK) adds to resolution implications of stubborn persistence and unwillingness to admit defeat.
Courage also comes in many forms, but today it comes from decisions made. Specifically those decisions made by the games greatest players. Before I lose you, let me suggest that you may have already been lost. The greatest players aren’t the ones who battle on Sunday’s or wear a pointed shield on their collar. Instead, THE GAME OF FOOTBALL’S GREATEST PLAYERS WEAR A BADGE ON THEIR CHEST. Do we look at talent, speed and skills or do we look at these same traits with a strong dose of courage, passion, and heart. The NPSFL player plays for the love, not a pay check. In fact, let the NPSFL hold your hand and take you further. YOUR ENFORCERS, GUARDIANS, and CENTURIONS play with the strong possibilityof actually LOSING their paycheck. Injuries can hide weeks of a season from your CHARGERS, DOLPHINS and RAIDERS, may be an entire season but not with loss of pay.
ACTS OF MUTUAL RESPECT - NPSFL PLAYERS PUT IT ALL ON THE LINE
INJURIES TO A COP OR FIRE FIGHTER LEADS TO THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE. Instead of talking about signing on to another team, WE TALK ABOUT LIFE LONG COMMITMENTS THAT IMPACT OUR FAMILIES. There are more compare and contrasts between the two leagues, like instead of committing crimes, with fight them; instead of putting our society in danger, we put our lives on the line to PROTECT OUR PUBLIC, but thats a different article. Injuries are the talk in our game, but not what stops us or slows us down. THE NPSFL PLAYER talks about how W E T A P E I T U P A N D G E T B A C K I N. That’s Courage. (And one of the main reasons the two teams line up on the 50 yard line after the game and after that HUDDLE UP AS ONE TEAM to pray together.)
However, even in a no holds barred NPSFL league, there is an exception to the rule of ’TOUGH GUY’; A respect that we MUST honor for more than the sake of our own health. That exception belongs to head injuries. Most notably, CONCUSSIONS. There has to be a respect for this injury, for more than just one players’ livlihood. We must wake up and battle the pride that is foolish, for the respect of the game, for the name of the league, for the very real possibility of damaging one of your families most important players; ourselves. The SAN DIEGO ENFORCERS have been blessed with many amazing and qualified volunteers in their respective field. One of these volunteers has placed a concerned on the topic of CONCUSSIONS. ALICE DAVIS-WINKEL, an athletic trainer for the UCSD Tritons took the time to write the following;
Athletic Trainer MARCIA KLAIBER checks for broken bones...she'll need more tape.
Usually I am more than happy just to do my job for the team by getting injured Enforcers back on the playing field as quickly and safely as possible. However, after reading Danny’s last article for Enforcer Nation I was moved to write a response. First, I’d like to say that to me all of you guys are heroes, not just those who play with injuries. On a daily basis you protect people without the means to protect themselves and you play as a team with more heart than any team I have ever worked with. I am honored to be able to use my skills and knowledge to help protect you while you play. I realize that as support staff, Marcia and I are sometimes not seen as anything more than “tapers,” but those of you who have worked with us to rehab or protect your injuries know better. You know that we will be creative and supportive in trying to help you play, and even volunteer time outside of game day to help teach you rehab programs for more complicated injuries. You know that we’ll try to give a player his best chance to play well with a torn ligament, bad muscle strain, nerves that don’t work, or even a casted fracture, but as a medical professional I am extremely concerned when I hear about athletes playing with concussions. I know it happens (a football team going 3 years without a reported concussion, hmmm), and I know that players aren’t always honest when they get concussion symptoms, but I need you to hear why I’m concerned and why you as players should be more concerned about playing with a concussion.
Concussions are serious injuries that can have long term side effects that can affect your life on and off the field, which is why it is important to treat them correctly. Getting “your bell rung” and having a headache for several hours or days afterwards is not normal, that means your brain has been injured and could be easily damaged further by being active too early. Resting when you have a concussion isn’t just a matter of giving the injury time to heal; research has shown that getting a second concussion immediately or soon after the first can easily cause symptoms to get worse including having symptoms much longer and much more severe, and in the very worst cases causing death. Getting a concussion isn’t like spraining your ankle, or even your knee, a second time; it is 100 times worse for you and you can’t rehab it away. I’ve been involved in athletic training for 14 yrs and the only absolute career-ending injuries I have ever seen were when players got too many concussions or a single really bad concussion. I’ve had 4 athletes just in the last 3 yrs who have had to quit their sport because of the side effects of multiple concussions and the dangers they posed for playing and their quality of life. Three of those 4 had to quit after 3 or less concussions in their life, and they had symptoms for several months following their last head injury (including headache and difficulty concentrating). One of those was actually my senior Men’s Rugby Captain who had played football, rugby, and/or wrestled for pretty much his entire life; he didn’t make the decision lightly. For people like you who risk their lives on the job, working with a concussion can put your life, and those of your fellow officers at risk, because a concussion can effect mood, balance, reaction time, and concentration for days, weeks, or longer after injury (in some cases much longer).
ENFORCER Athletic Trainer MARCIA KLAIBER tapes up #27 JAHIR "WALK ON" WATERMAN. Torn ligaments won't stop or slow, yet ANOTHER NPSFL PLAYER.
We should be showing a stand of support as a whole team to keep everyone playing and working as healthy and as long as they can; I know that’s what the medical staff works hard for all the time. Supporting hiding a concussion (or hiding one yourself) does the opposite. I realize that the article in Enforcer Nation wasn’t trying to encourage anyone to hide a concussion, but I know how difficult it is for most of you to trust us as medical staff with caring for a concussion properly (i.e. taking you out of a game or not). For me, the worst part of my job is having to remove a player from a game (or at least it ranks up there with freezing my ass off on the field and lugging 90 pound coolers), so unless it is absolutely necessary I won’t, and I believe that Marcia feels the same. The problem with you not consulting us when you get hurt is that as players you are not experts in concussion; Marcia, Dr. Chuan, and I are. Not every athlete will experience the same symptoms of concussion, and even an athlete who has had a concussion before won’t always have the same symptoms with the next. I can’t tell you how many times in my career I’ve heard, “I only have a concussion if my vision is blurred/ my head hurts all over/ I throw up/ I get knocked out…” That’s just not true, there are easily 10+ symptoms of concussion (some common like headache and blurred vision, others harder to notice like feeling foggy or irritable) and any one of them could be your only symptom for that concussion. I’ve even had athletes take a really hard hit and feel fine, then start having symptoms hours later. As athletic trainers/ Sports Medicine physician, we can tell you if you are mentally or physically affected by your head injury, let you know how to treat your head injury, and let you know whether or not the symptoms you are having even add up to a concussion.
For more information; check out web site by clicking on image.
If we as a team can encourage a culture of keeping players from getting multiple head injuries the team will be better off as a whole (i.e. we’ll be able to keep players playing longer). Both of my Rugby teams have realized this after years of doing the opposite (in addition their coaches are very supportive of keeping their athletes healthy) and I rarely have problems with them trying to hide concussion or having season-ending/ daily life-effecting multiple concussions. I see about 10-20 concussions a year just on our teams at UCSD (in addition to probably 10 more on visiting teams), and we’ve been able to prevent recurrences in all but 3 or 4 over the past 3 yrs by treating them appropriately.
http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/health_safety/ConFactSheetsa.pdf
Thanks for your attention. Go Enforcers!
Alice Davis-Winkel, MA, ATC, CES
A special thank you for the contributions of ENFORCER Athletic trainer, ALICE DAVIS-WINKEL. Please send all comments, concerns or questions to dmtntop1@yahoo.com
