Spring Break
Concussion changes senior's role
Chris Brodeur
Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Sports
The immediate effects of a concussion are pretty easy to spot. In fact, it required little medical expertise to determine that the blank gaze of Oklahoma college basketball standout Blake Griffin as he sat on the sidelines during a game in Texas on Feb. 21 was the result of one such injury.
Griffin looked lost as trainers and coaches tried to avert his attention from the action on the court. He desperately wanted to re-enter the game, but his handlers knew he was not all there following two separate blows to his head that he sustained battling in the paint.
His symptoms subsided and he was well enough to rejoin the Sooners' lineup a week later.
But not all victims of serious head injuries experience such a relatively quick and seamless recovery. In some cases, veiled symptoms can set in, marking the presence of post-concussion syndrome - a condition that former UConn hockey player Ryan Hawkins knows all too well.
Hawkins suffered multiple concussions, some playing junior hockey prior to his collegiate career and more since his arrival in Storrs. Consequently, he is chronically plagued with crippling headaches and severe pain in his neck and back. While he may appear fine to an uninformed onlooker, the mental state that Griffin was stricken with momentarily still lingers to this day for Hawkins, making the simplest of tasks often agonizing to complete. It is a fight he is learning to accept that may never fully go away.
"I'm still battling every day, still in pain 24/7," Hawkins said after last Friday's Senior Night festivities at the Freitas Ice Forum - a 4-1 win for the Huskies over Bentley. "I get headaches. My neck and back are equally as painful. I still can't skate. My headache kills me after I've been on my feet."
Hawkins, a native of Eden Prairie, Minn., has served as a volunteer member of UConn's coaching staff this season under head coach Bruce Marshall, something he was reluctant about when he first learned his injuries would keep him from ever playing hockey again.
Griffin looked lost as trainers and coaches tried to avert his attention from the action on the court. He desperately wanted to re-enter the game, but his handlers knew he was not all there following two separate blows to his head that he sustained battling in the paint.
His symptoms subsided and he was well enough to rejoin the Sooners' lineup a week later.
But not all victims of serious head injuries experience such a relatively quick and seamless recovery. In some cases, veiled symptoms can set in, marking the presence of post-concussion syndrome - a condition that former UConn hockey player Ryan Hawkins knows all too well.
Hawkins suffered multiple concussions, some playing junior hockey prior to his collegiate career and more since his arrival in Storrs. Consequently, he is chronically plagued with crippling headaches and severe pain in his neck and back. While he may appear fine to an uninformed onlooker, the mental state that Griffin was stricken with momentarily still lingers to this day for Hawkins, making the simplest of tasks often agonizing to complete. It is a fight he is learning to accept that may never fully go away.
"I'm still battling every day, still in pain 24/7," Hawkins said after last Friday's Senior Night festivities at the Freitas Ice Forum - a 4-1 win for the Huskies over Bentley. "I get headaches. My neck and back are equally as painful. I still can't skate. My headache kills me after I've been on my feet."
Hawkins, a native of Eden Prairie, Minn., has served as a volunteer member of UConn's coaching staff this season under head coach Bruce Marshall, something he was reluctant about when he first learned his injuries would keep him from ever playing hockey again.
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