\”They refer to it as the beautiful game. There is an art to it.\” A former FC Dallas defender, Ugo Ehemelu looks just like he did in 2012. He could still be fresh in the soccer field. \”You have a lot of people focusing on the same wavelength to complete something and make something,\” he continues. \”Different individuals have different skills and also you try to work together.\” During his career with FC Dallas, he was a star player. He had lots of shining moments, for instance on April 5, 2012, in a game against Colonial Revolution, as he scored an especially heart-stopping goal in overtime to win the sport. He became team captain with a contract extending through 2023.
\”It's amazing,\” Ugo says. \”I've had experiences where the crowds aren't too large. I've had times where I've scored the winning goal in the eleventh hour and that energy, that adrenaline is ridiculous. Forty thousand fans clapping and cheering-at a particular point you can't hear, it's just noise. It's energy. It's pure energy. It's amazing when that lots of people get together for something. Music is energy. I'd say it is the same goes with soccer. You put a lot of your life into being in front famous those people and performing.\”
Ugo was increasing. After which on May 6, 2012 he sustained a concussion on the field that ended his professional soccer career.
We meet at Houndstooth Coffeehouse in Oak Cliff. He, his wife as well as their two young children are out on the shaded patio. Upbeat and pleased to be there, he's built an amazing life in the wake of his professional soccer career.
Ugo was born in Nigeria and has fond memories of kicking the ball around with family. Following a move to Canada and then to Dallas, he was still being kicking. He started playing club soccer around age 12 when, as he puts it, his passion for that game \”took on the lifetime of its very own.\” When he and his coaches noticed his talent, he figured he should stick with it. He discusses those defining moments with engrossing passion, like the '98 World Cup, which he fondly remembers watching.
\”I watched the whole tournament. The U.S. National team didn't perform well for the reason that tournament, but I loved seeing in france they team win the trophy. That really helped me adore it,\” he says. After college, he was drafted to L.A. Galaxy. Then the Colorado Rapids. And before he knew it, he was headed home to play for FC Dallas.
\”I didn't expect it. You usually picture in your head that you'll return home towards the end of the career-which I suppose ended up being the situation for me personally.\” He offers a wry smile. \”It was a surprise but it was exciting.\”
Ugo remembers North Texas prior to the business boom. He remembers Toyota Stadium when it was \”what maybe it was, Pizza Hut Park?\” He had first played there around the opponents. \”Leading as much as the stadium, in the Embassy Suites on, it had been simply a dirt road. However after i got traded back, that whole area was created. In Dallas there was such a transformation and what's going on in Frisco, with the Cowboys moving there-it's amazing. This is an exciting place to be.\”
Ugo's first documented concussion was sustained as he was playing attending college and was hit in the back of the head. \”I was to playing the following week.\” He had a concussion in Colorado and two concussions in Dallas. He admits that most athletes can't be sure the number of concussions they have sustained because many go unreported. \”You just keep going. As long as you can keep performing, keep moving, you're okay,\” he says. He actually had two hip surgeries while playing professionally.
From a medical standpoint, concussions really are a brain injuries induced by mechanical forces-what doctors call twisting forces-of the mind in the skull, affecting its function. Troy Smurawa, Director of Pediatric Sports Medicine at Children's Health Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine, sees them as he works with student-athletes.
\”The mental abilities are a highly complex organ that sits inside a hard skull,\” Dr. Smurawa explains. \”If there's a hit to the skull, the brain sloshes around inside and impacts from the inside. That induce injury to the brain itself -known as concussions.\”
Doctors depend on basic cognitive assessments to determine if a patient has sustained a concussion. But it is still a scattershoot since symptoms can-but don't necessarily-include everything from headaches, dizziness, difficulty concentrating, sensitivity to noise and light, nausea, disorientation, blurred vision, irritability, forgetfulness, ringing in ears to loss of consciousness showing up randomly times in random combinations. Just like no two brains are alike, no two concussions are generally.
As for causing permanent damage, Dr. Smurawa says there is no rule. \”Sometimes just one concussion is sufficient.\”
As long as Ugo could play, there was no reason to prevent. \”I've always been the type that attempts to be balanced in how I live my life,\” he says. \”You know it won't last forever, however, you can't think about that when you're attempting to succeed. When I had my last concussion, I had been 29. I had been starting to enter into my groove. I wasn't considering it ending when it did.\”
It would be a home game from the Colorado Rapids. Inside a strange twist, Ugo was defending a person who he'd developed playing soccer against. They'd competed for that position of defender in college which player had played for FC Dallas prior to being traded to Colorado-in exchange for Ugo. An accidental nudge caught Ugo at the wrong angle and his neck snapped back.
\”I was dazed, however these things happen during games so I kept going,\” Ugo recalls. He finished the sport, but when he was off the field, he realized he didn't feel right. He was agitated, comparing it to being buzzed after a couple of a lot of drinks.
\”I remember it vividly,\” he states. \”There's the physical aspect of a concussion but there's additionally a emotional and mental aspect. The whole room was spinning, and that i felt like I had been in a corner in the dark being watched. It wasn't a good place to maintain, and that lasted for some time, very long time.\”
When he was hit, Ugo didn't pass out. He didn't experience memory loss. Actually, 2 yrs earlier while he was playing against a global team-against professionals that he was raised idolizing-he was knocked out cold, waking up inside a daze, his family crowded around his hospital bed.
\”They showed me videos and asked me questions, and I was on repeat basically,\” he explains. \”I would ask the same questions over and over again. It had been nasty stuff.\” It took him nearly 3 months to recuperate enough to play, but although it put his career on pause, it had not been the end and that he was soon back in play, terrific once again.
Part from the problem of concussions is the fact that there is certainly no objective test to diagnose them. Concussions are notoriously tricky, not usually appearing on typical imaging techniques like CT and MRI. According to Dr. Scott C. Kutz, a neurosurgeon at Texas Back Institute, while clinical assessments and a doctor's experienced eye certainly go a long way, there isn't any definitive test for detecting concussion, and often no assurance that an athlete can go back to the field safely.
\”A normal person includes a car crash or perhaps a fall,\” he notes. \”Usually that's a one-time event. A sports athlete returns towards the game, where the chances are it'll happen again.\”
It wasn't Ugo's decision to retire. Initially, he was making good progress, but at the end of the growing season, his doctors requested one more test which required heading, ramming the ball with his head. \”That disrupted everything,\” Ugo admits. \”During offseason, I had been offline basically.\” He traveled to Europe to keep his mind off soccer and followed his doctor's instructions to the letter. He did everything right, however when the time came, he couldn't pass the required tests. His headaches didn't subside and it was clear to everyone, most of all Ugo, he couldn't finish his contract with FC Dallas. His concussions still affected him.
\”It's difficult to leave. It kind of becomes an addiction. Training is difficult, however, you train so difficult, you sacrifice a great deal and also you get tunnel vision,\” Ugo says. While he couldn't work out, he reconnected with a college acquaintance who had been teaching yoga in Puerto Rico, hoping for a method to stay physically fit and promote healing within himself. Today, they're married with two kids.
\”I can work out again,\” Ugo lists off. \”I look in a TV screen. I'm realizing I can't stare in a computer for very long, however i need to view it just like a challenge and a method to improve myself. My memory is better than it had been. I've adopted meditation and yoga, and I've been eating healthier. That's all I can control at this time.
\”Some bad things happened within my career,\” he admits. \”But it resulted in some great things.\” He gestures to his family around him.
Concussions are one of the most hot-button issues within the sports world, particularly now as long-term effects from head injuries are delivered to the forefront. Sports was a lot safer, for example, when Tony Dorsett became the most celebrated athlete ever to speak up concerning the damaging effects he has suffered because of CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries.
Doctors who deal with concussions hope that the new blood test could help determine whether and when a sports athlete is ready to return into the field by detecting certain proteins within the bloodstream which are normally in the brain. This happens when a concussion disturbs the natural blood-brain barrier. By identifying these proteins in the blood, experts hope to figure out how serious a concussion has been sustained and track its healing. Dr. Kutz says nevertheless there is some debate about the test's reliability, it represents a step forward in concussion research: the possibility of a goal, definitive test.
As our knowledge of concussions evolves, one thing hasn't changed: sometimes it all comes down to a single hard knock.