By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
“You have to be aggressive and you have to hit hard or you can’t play,” said Charles Pagan
That’s why football teammates at Garfield High call Pagan, the Freight Train. Garfield’s top-ranked soccer star plays an aggressive game, but last year, Wojcieck Piwowarczyk got his head butted — hard.
“The adrenaline, it’s like you can’t even feel it. But then after a while you get dizzy. It just starts spinning,” Piwowarczyk said.
So the Garfield High School centerback immediately stopped playing, right? Not exactly.
“I was thinking, ‘This is an important game. We’re contending for a league championship. I’m the captain on this team — I can’t, you know, let my team down,” he said. “I thought I was fine, you know, I kept playing, I kept running, but the players saw there was something wrong with me, right?”
His team saw their captain’s glazed expression and made him sit down. The CDC’s Grant Baldwin says, almost 70 percent of high school athletes in one survey reported they kept on playing, even with a possible concussion. He says, that’s wrong.
“We need to build a culture in sports where athletes are encouraged by coaches and parents to report a concussion — regardless of how important the game is. All concussions are serious. The brain needs time to heal,” Baldwin said.
“Every concussion is brain damage!” said Congressman Bill Pascrell.
At a news conference at Garfield High, Baldwin joined Pascrell to announce a new CDC initiative that aims to target the sports culture that promotes playing through pain. They say, coaches, parents and health care providers must stay vigilant and protect players, but a whole attitude shift must happen, too.
“And that’s not an easy task. All you have to do is look at the National Football League who swept it under the rug for so many years and now are trying frantically to keep up with those football players who played football in the NFL and are now vegetables,” Pascrell said.
“It involves you, the student athlete, to have the wherewithal and the courage to report a concussion,” said Baldwin.
The CDC says more than 325,000 kids and teens went to the ER with sports-related head trauma in 2012. They say the problem is dramatically under-reported. Garfield’s sports Director acknowledges that it’s a tough sell to students.
“They don’t want to be ‘weak,’ as they would say. They want to be competitive, but you know what? In the long run, it’s their future,” Mike Alfonso said.
“It’s tough to believe that everyone’s going to follow this because you love the sport. You don’t want to get out at all, especially if you’re a senior, someone like me. You don’t want to get off the field at all. But, at the same time, you have to just do what’s right for you. Your brain is what’s going to keep you alive,” Pagan said.
Advocates will keep pushing to reshape that sports culture that glorifies winning at all costs, because sometimes that cost is just too high.