Adjusting, after getting hurt, is a tough hurdle
2nd November 2015 · 0 Comments
By Allana Barefield
Contributing Writer
The stadium was crowded. Fans were screaming at the top of their lungs rooting for the players on the field. Then, suddenly silence. A deafening silence.
Devon Walker was a rising Tulane University football player until he injured his C3 and C4 vertebrae and became paralyzed from the neck down on Sept. 8, 2012.
Three years later, Devon Walker is writing the next chapter of his story.
“I was praying I wasn’t going to die,” said Devon Walker. The game was against the University of Tulsa where he was playing in the position of safety.
Walker’s injury captured national headlines and his university has stepped up to care for him for the rest of his life. But as Will Smith’s new movie Concussion generates controversy and sheds light on professional injuries, many student athletes suffer minor or major injuries that potentially eliminate them from launching the career they have dreamed of for most of their lives.
The National Athletic Trainers Association estimates there are on average 12,500 injuries per year in college athletics. About one-quarter of those injuries are considered serious or severe, and at least one-third of athletes have experienced a concussion. Before even reaching college, the Southwest Athletic Trainers Association estimates that high school athletes alone, have suffered two million injuries, made 500,000 doctor visits with 30,000 hospitalizations. All within a one-year period. In 2011 there were 39 sports-related deaths.
The life of an injured student athlete is one that psychologists say shows the perseverance of a young person who has learned about life through the discipline of sports.
Walker speaks in confidence that everything he does in life has meaning to it. After a three-hour surgery to stabilize his spine in 2012 he admits he is grateful to be alive – grateful to still be able to see his loved ones. Walker may be bound to a wheelchair, but sitting down and breathing through a plastic straw to navigate his wheelchair does not stop him. He wants to build a legacy, his empire, he calls it, a testament to his second lease on life. He now holds a Bachelor of Science in Cell and Molecular Biology from Tulane. He says he recognizes how fortunate he has been with the support and attention he’s received locally, but many others are not. Now, he’s ready to give back.
His nonprofit organization, The Walker Foundation, will officially launch this month with high school and college athletes who suffer with spinal injuries. Through his foundation he wants to help families purchase medical equipment to use every day to allow them to transition after a devastating injury. Before his injury, the New Orleans native, who attended Destrehan High School, had dreamed of getting drafted to play with the Saints after college. Yet despite the blow to his career, Walker is still a big dreamer.
“I envision The Walker Foundation to eventually spread around the world,” Walker said. “I want to be known for helping to find the cure for spinal chord injuries,” he said. The love for football will always be part of his life. The New Orleans native grew up watching the Saints on TV and imagined himself being on that field.
“This was my dream, everyone dreams of playing at that next level and once it ends you wish you can go back,” Walker said. Getting to sign a contract with the Saints in 2014 “made me feel like a kid at Christmas,” Walker said. The Saints presented Walker with the contract because of his leadership role in the community and his attributes when he played at Tulane. “Even though I can’t play on the field I’m still cheering everyone on to reach their fullest potential,” Walker said.
He wants to study the science of his injury. So he keeps busy by juggling the non-profit with graduate studies at Tulane as he seeks to earn another degree, a Masters in Neuroscience. “Two days a week I attend rehab where I am getting feeling back in my biceps, triceps, and arms,” Walker said of his progress. “My family, friends, and coaches love my foundation to keep fighting. I won’t let someone tell me I can’t do something,” Walker added.
Walker’s injuries are well known and visible, but many other student athletes carry on in obscurity. No one would suspect Xavier University junior Eliqua Brooks to have suffered a major sporting injury. Hers was a concussion. Basketball was her life and she transferred from Angelina College in Lufkin, Texas to Xavier in 2014. She soon became a standout where she played shooting guard. “Basketball has helped me get the opportunity to get an education,” Brooks said. “Playing this sport has gotten me get off the streets in Maryland where it would be my outlet. I would go to the park and practice with my friends but l learned the game from watching men play,” Brooks added.
On Dec. 17, 2014, Brooks and another player were both going after the ball in the air when they collided into one another. The doctors told her she suffered a concussion, a broken nose, cheekbone, and that she had lost sensation in her lip.
“My injury still has control over me till this day where I don’t remember a lot of things from the past,” Brooks added. Of one of the most important things she lost, Brooks said, was her love and passion for the game after the concussion.
“The injury affected my whole outlook on my game and the game,” Brooks said. “Even though I do not play anymore for Xavier, the group of ladies and coaches are the ones who truly care about you, not only on the court but off,” she said of the support she still receives. She doesn’t regret transferring to Xavier. It was here that her coaches gave her career advice to consider mass communication as well as physical education as additional career options. “I wanted to become a coach, so mass communication is something I’m trying to find interest in, but my desire is to be a coach and help kids learn the game,” Brooks said of her dual interests.
Looking into the minds of athletes shows that there is a lot of pressure on them to perform and that they have an intense desire for excellence, said Dr. Brian Turner, a licensed clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Xavier. Turner, a New Orleans native, understands this pressure well as he too was a student athlete that played football his four years at Southern University and A&M College. Athletes question everything they do while in the game, Turner said. It’s a career choice that requires extreme mental discipline, strength, and even resilience.
Student athletes spend about 40 hours of their week going through training, studying film, weight lifting, then game time and travelling with teammates. “They are trained for this environment to adapt,” Turner said. At the collegiate level, it’s the last stage before they “sell their souls” to the demands on their body and mind that is professional athletics, Turner added. But it also lays a strong foundation for those who don’t make it or suffer injuries that count them out the game before they have started a professional career, Turner said.
“Some teams can be a place where they have great leadership in order to grow but could have negative elements that can take your hopes and dreams,” Turner said. Athletes like Walker, who played at the Division I collegiate level, will have more resources available to him for his injuries, Turner explained. But athletes at smaller Divisions, like the ones Historically Black Colleges play in ,will have less resources available for an injured student athlete beyond graduation, he said.
Student athletes must ask themselves a tough question, Turner said: “How much are you going to risk to play the game? Look at Derrick Rose getting hurt every year and still comes back to play, imagine what’s happening to his mind and body,” Turner said of the Chicago Bulls point guard. Although athletes are being knocked down in the game they are strong enough to not get knocked out of life. “Athletes love the game to know when they have done everything they can to then start a new chapter,” Turner said.
This article originally published in the November 2, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
