SEQUIM — Adrien Gault loved football.
He “ate, breathed and drank” it while playing running back, cornerback and whatever else for the Sequim Wolves from 2003-06.
He trained constantly to become a better player, lifting, running and drilling as much as he could. He had no qualms with putting his relatively small (5-foot-9, 160 pounds) frame up against bigger opponents.
And if he got banged up, which happened a few times, he counted the days until he could get back out on the field.
That was the one place that mattered the most.
Nowadays, however, he can’t bring himself to even attend a Wolves football game.
There’s too many memories of a night that forever altered his life — Oct. 20, 2006, his Senior Night — he’d rather not revisit.
How screamed in pain on the sidelines. How he dropped to the ground and went into a seizure. How an ambulance took him away as he slid into a coma, blood running from his ear.
How he came within an inch of losing his life if not for the emergency brain surgery performed on him hours later in Seattle.
“I don’t remember what happened [that night], but all the stories that have been told to me, I play it out in my mind,” said Gault, now 20 years old and living in Sequim.
“I don’t like to imagine it.”
What he actually remembers is bad enough:
Getting picked up by a teammate after being tackled on a sweep one moment, then waking up in a hospital bed the next.
“It was terrifying,” he said, recalling that day at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
“I just have this big window in front of me, and this big city, and I have no clue why I’m there. I’ve got an IV in my arm, tubes in my nose helping me breath.”
“I started to freak out.”
His mother, Patricia Stamper, was sitting next to him at the hospital. She asked what was wrong.
“I was just playing football,” he said.
“No, that was two weeks ago,” she said.
Second impact
Gault suffered a subdural hematoma that night, a traumatic brain injury that causes it to bleed and swell.
He had collided violently with a teammate during warm-ups prior to the game. Nevertheless, he played a little more than a quarter before collapsing on the sideline following his only carry of the game.
After being airlifted to Harborview, doctors cut away a piece of his skull to relieve pressure on his brain.
The bone fragment was frozen and later replaced in his head months later, along with a piece of plastic.
Stamper said that doctors could not pinpoint what exactly caused his injury.
But the fact that he’d sustained previous concussions, including one earlier in the season in which he had to be carted off the field, suggest he could have sustained second impact syndrome (SIS).
SIS is a condition that causes the brain to swell after a person suffers a second concussion before symptoms from an earlier one have subsided.
Believed to be more common with adolescent athletes whose brains are still developing, it can prove fatal or lead to life-long disabilities.
And it’s one of the reasons the Lystedt Law, which prohibits youth athletes suspected of sustaining a concussion from returning to play without a licensed health-care provider’s approval, was passed unanimously by the state Legislature earlier last month.
Dr. Stanley Herring — a team physician for the Seattle Seahawks and Director of Spine Care at the University of Washington — was one of many in the medical community to champion the law, the first of its kind in the country.
He will speak at a free community workshop at the Sequim High School Auditorium this Saturday from 1-3 p.m. (see story on Page B3).
“This is the right thing to do at the right time,” he said during a telephone interview. “All concussions should be taken seriously.
“Most [concussion sufferers] do get better, but some can lead to both short- and long-term devastating consequences.”
The law was named after 16-year-old Zackery Lystedt of Maple Valley, who suffered a life-threatening brain injury just one week before Gault’s.
Lystedt sustained a concussion and returned to the same game without being examined by a licensed health care provider trained in recognizing and managing concussions.
After collapsing on the field, he underwent emergency brain surgery at Harborview. He remains dependent on a wheel chair and around-the-clock supervision to meet his needs to this day.
“This [law] makes it really nice,” Herring said.
“It takes the pressure off the coach. It takes the pressure off the school system.
“You can not prevent the first concussion, but by stopping the second, third or fourth, we’ll save a life in Washington every year.”
More athletes
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates more than 3.5 million sports-and-related concussions occur each year in the United States.
While football sees the highest rate of incidence (think: “Got his bell rung”), sports like soccer and basketball also see its athletes sustain concussions. And it’s not just something that happens to male athletes.
A story published by the Journal of Athletic Training in 2007 found that girls sustained a higher rate of concussions than boys in sports played by both sexes.
Sequim girls soccer player Chase O’Neill twice hit her head during a soccer game last September.
She didn’t think much of it until the next day when she began experiencing headaches. She was medically cleared to play a few days later by a doctor, but she didn’t feel right once she started back up.
“I pretty much get an instant headache as soon as I start exercising,” said O’Neill, who has missed 46 days of school this year. “It was like I’d get a headache pretty much every day [for a while]. I’d have it for a couple of hours on and off.”
O’Neill, a two-sport athlete who also previously ran track, hasn’t played since the injury.
She is one of a handful of Peninsula athletes who suffered concussions to be featured in a video to be shown at Saturday’s workshop.
Among them are Port Angeles’ Bridgette LeBer (girls soccer), Chimacum’s Chance Eldridge (football) and Port Angeles’ Cameron Moon (football).
The video — titled “Help! My Bell Just Rung” — was put together by Jean Rickerson of Sequim.
Her own son, Drew, unknowingly sustained a concussion as the Wolves’ quarterback in the team’s first playoff game last fall.
He stayed in the game for a handful of plays afterward, even running in a 25-yard touchdown, before noticing something was wrong.
“He was losing his eyesight and his hearing on the sideline,” Jean Rickerson said.
“Because he had lost his cognitive ability, he wasn’t able to articulate that.”
Drew was cleared to play the next game the following Monday. Yet after he lost feeling in his extremities a couple of days later, that idea went out the window.
Different test
It took three months for Drew to finally be cleared to resume playing sports.
But he received his clearance from the highest source, Dr. Herring himself, after passing a series of neuropsychological tests.
Such tests examine a subject’s memory, concentration and reaction time. If scores fall below an established baseline level, then the subject does not pass.
It’s just another way of measuring a person’s recovery from a concussion outside of more established methods.
“I think there are some misunderstandings about what constitutes a concussion and what doesn’t,” Herring said. “A ding is not always a ding.
“Most sports concussions do not involve being knocked out, only 10 percent do. Some people have a headache. Others are dizzy. Others might have problems with memories. It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation.”
Now that the Lystedt Law has been passed, health-care providers who clear athletes medically will likely be able to recognize whatever symptoms arise.
That’s because such health-care workers must be trained in the evaluation and management of concussion to clear any player removed from a game.
Furthermore, all coaches, athletes and parents must be educated on the nature and risk of concussions before a season begins.
Under such provisions, Gault’s injury just might have been avoided.
“Adrien was cleared to return to play, but under the new law that note would not have been accepted,” said Sequim athletic director Dave Ditlefsen, then the football team’s offensive coordinator.
“There wasn’t necessarily a protocol [for dealing with head injuries] during games before.
“Now the law will help us have more specific things to do and follow up on.”
Lingering on
Nearly three years later, Gault’s injury still lingers.
He still doesn’t have full control of his left arm, making things like typing and using a fork difficult.
He suffers recurring headaches and lapses in his memory.
And sometimes, according to his mother, his mind even transports to a time before his injury as if it had just happened.
“I do see some effects, but it’s more the people around me that notice it,” said Gault. “There is definitely a me before and a me after.
“My situation was very severe, and I’m very lucky to be how I am. [Lystedt] got that same injury, the exact same injury, and he’s still in a wheelchair.
“I look at myself and I think, ‘Man, I’m so lucky.’
“I’m able to walk around. I’m able to do things for myself. I was able to finish high school.”
Despite his injury he still longs to return to the football field and would do so in a second if he knew he wouldn’t be risking his life.
Of course, that will likely never be the case. An eight-inch scar stretching across the left side of his head — where surgeons removed part of his skull — serves a reminder of that.
He plans to go back to school and receive a four-year degree as soon as he can get enough money together (without health insurance he can’t even afford mandatory doctor’s visits right now).
Gault said he wants to study to be an athletic trainer, so he can be the guy who tapes up players and takes care of their injuries.
Perhaps once that happens he can watch a Sequim football game again.
“It just takes a little bit of time, I guess you could say,” he said.