Soccer Star Confronts The Concussion That Killed Her Career And Clouded Her Life

Brianna Scurry

Excerpt: "Since an April 2010 game, when an overeager forward slammed into Scurry, that headache chased her from one defeat to another: forcing her to quietly retire from soccer, tripping her up during a short-lived gig with ESPN and finally pushing her into depression. Her roommate would come home from work and find Scurry listless on the couch, where she’d been all afternoon. On those days, Scurry found herself beset with questions familiar to many athletes who suffer serious concussions: What is wrong with me? And why am I not better yet? Scientists can’t entirely answer those questions, but a growing body of research suggests that - counter to the popular imagery of young men smashing into each other in football and hockey - female athletes suffer relatively more concussions than their male counterparts, and they struggle with more dramatic symptoms when they do. In high school sports that have similar rules for boys and girls, girls get concussions at twice the rate, according to a 2011 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. Another study found that among all collegiate athletes, female soccer players had the highest overall concussion rates. Even as she came up from the haze of anesthesia, Scurry could mumble one estimate to a curious hospital employee:  about one in two female soccer players will get a concussion in her career."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/11/02/her-biggest-save/?wpisrc=nl_headlines