Concussions in Young Athletes Blog #3

Welcome back to my third blog! For those of you who have not read my first and second blogs, click here for the first and here for the second. For those of you who have read them, thank you so much for sticking with me! Again, my name is Cacy Thomas and I am making these blogs because of my 9th grade English project called You and the World. In this project I am creating 3 blogs talking about an issue in the world I am passionate about. This issue is concussions in young athletes. As stated in my first blog I have had a few concussions in the past that have ended my athletic career before it even started. Anyhow, this piece I am writing at the moment is about what I have done to spread awareness and try to change this. But first I will tell you what has been done, and what is going on right now.

The ThinkTaylor foundation is run by a former professional soccer player named Taylor Twellman. I learned about this organization because I was asked to speak with him at a concussion symposium in 2012. You can visit his website here and see the symposium details here. As I was sitting next to him listening to him talk about his experiences, I noticed something. I was not alone in this. There were so many other people going through the same thing as I was. After talking about his story, he asked me to talk about what was going on with me. When I was finished I realized I wanted to help people like he is doing. Now I finally had the chance. I knew I couldn’t do anything huge like him, but I finally got the chance to do something. Because of this project I was able to present concussion facts, information, and my own story to my advisory. While I was presenting I could tell my classmates weren’t very interested in the statistics or facts. When I began to tell my story in depth that was what really got their attention. I noticed that this was the same in the concussion symposium. People reacted more emotionally to my story than certain facts. I was proud to be able to spread awareness of concussions through my experiences.

A picture of my presentation during advisory

A picture of my classmates playing “Concussion Jeopardy”, a game I put together for the presentation.

A picture of myself explaining an answer in “Concussion Jeopardy”

Everything that is being done to support concussions in young athletes is amazing. It is preventing kids from becoming seriously injured and also letting them play the sport they love. I feel like the best way to make people aware of what is going on is speaking from experience. This way to change this issue is amazing. It makes people know the hardships others have been through because of concussions. It moves people to do something about it because now they know how terrible what’s going on is. This is the only way an audience can truly feel what happens to those who have suffered concussions.

Doing this project made me feel great. It finally gave me the chance to be like Taylor Twellman and inspire people to do something. I’ve made about 30-35 kids aware of the effects of concussions in young athletes. I know it isn’t much but it’s a start. And I learned that people react much more to personal experiences than statistics and facts. I feel like I could have done better by telling even more of my story in my presentation. I left out some things just because I forgot, however every detail  contributes and makes my story come even more alive. There is still a lot to do in the world of concussions. People don’t pay attention to facts they are told. They only pay attention when they or someone they are close to have experienced this. As Mario Manningham said,

“It’s part of the game… Until it’s you.”