The on-field concussion that ended goalkeeper Briana Scurry's soccer career on April 25, 2010, didn't draw gasps from spectators or prompt medics to rush onto the field. Even Scurry, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and World Cup champion, was initially unaware of the severity of the damage.
She was guarding the goal for the Washington Freedom, part of the newly launched Women's Professional Soccer league, when she lunged for the ball just as a forward for the opposing Philadelphia Independence also tried to get to it. The other player's knee slammed into Scurry's temple. Her first thought, after she briefly lost consciousness, was “Did I make the save?”
She had, and the ball was in her hands. “It wasn't even a foul,” Scurry marvels. “I remember hearing, ‘Come on. Let's go. Let's play.'” So she kicked the ball away, reset herself in the goal, and blocked a few more scoring attempts until halftime began a few minutes later.
But when she walked off the field, her body listed to one side. Her head was pounding and her vision was blurry. A trainer with the league asked if she was okay. “I'd had concussions before, and I knew this one was different,” says Scurry, now 51.
The trainer helped her leave the field, and league doctors confirmed that she had been concussed, predicting a full recovery in a few weeks. When that didn't happen, the doctors extended it to one month, then two. But the pain didn't fade. “It would start behind my left ear every morning and creep up the back of my head,” she says, “and by early evening I was on the couch wondering if it was ever going to stop.” She tried to go on as normal with her life, but the pain was overwhelming. Five months later, she announced her retirement.
Before the injury, Scurry had been a fierce competitor and a beloved teammate, an inspiration for those who'd never seen a Black, gay athlete achieve such on-field success or speak out so much for gender equity in sports. After her injury, Scurry lived for three years with constant headaches that made her anxious and upset. She was unable to work or sleep well, struggled to perform routine tasks, and had problems with walking and balance. She became so depressed that she considered ending her life, once standing on a ledge overlooking a waterfall near her New Jersey apartment, preparing to jump. She didn't, because she couldn't imagine the pain her death would cause her already ailing mother.
Scurry's brain, she says, “was broken,” but most doctors dismissed her concerns. The sports organizations that had once honored her stayed on the sidelines. Insurance providers questioned her workers' compensation claims and the need for ongoing medical treatment. At one point, Scurry was forced to sell her Olympic gold medals to keep creditors at bay. “Every morning for three years I woke up and hoped it would be better, but it never was,” Scurry says.
Still, she pressed forward, fighting to see her preferred doctor, then fighting even harder for a medical procedure known as bilateral occipital nerve release surgery, a relatively new treatment at the time. “[The insurance companies] figure the person is going to give up, and I was not that person,” she says. Finally, in October 2013, during a one-hour outpatient procedure, surgeons made an incision above Scurry's hairline and removed damaged tissue that was compressing the occipital nerve. The constant headaches she'd experienced for three years ceased immediately.
“I'm far enough away from the hard times now to be more objective, and I can say I would not change a thing,” says Scurry, who tells her story in her 2022 memoir, My Greatest Save: The Brave, Barrier-Breaking Journey of a World Champion Goalkeeper, and whose life and accomplishments are the basis of the Paramount+ documentary The Only.
Concussion Recovery
Before the blow that ended her soccer career, Scurry had had two documented concussions, both occurring during training camp. After each, she rested for about two days before returning to the field. She believes she had concussions dozens of additional times and wonders how those earlier incidents affected her brain. “I've been diving to the ground since I was 12. I'm sure a sizable amount of those times I either hit my head or jarred it or got spun in the air and didn't land right,” she says.
There's no precise number of concussions that will lead to permanent injury. What matters more than the number is the pattern of the injuries: how long symptoms last, whether the athlete recovers completely from each injury, and whether concussions occur more easily over time. These can be clues to a brain's vulnerability to impact.
“If you have multiple concussions but you recover in a normal time frame and you get a lot of positives out of your sport, the benefits can outweigh the risks of continuing to play that sport,” says Sean C. Rose, MD, a pediatric sports neurologist and co-director of the Complex Concussion Clinic at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH. “But if after one or two concussions, you have months and months of symptoms affecting your daily life, you might want to think twice about playing.”
On average, people who sustain sports-related concussions are symptom-free within 10 to 14 days, and the majority are fully recovered within one month, says Jack W. Tsao, MD, PhD, FAAN, professor of neurology at the NYU Langone Grossman School of Medicine. About 5 percent of people with sports-related concussions still show symptoms a year after their initial injuries. Doctors can treat symptoms like headaches and sleep problems with medication, but allowing enough time to heal is crucial, Dr. Tsao says. “A full recovery is also possible with subsequent head injuries, but your symptoms may be more severe and last longer,” he adds. “And even after people heal from concussions, they're more susceptible to injury.”
Not too long ago, doctors advised people with concussions to retreat to dark, quiet rooms and avoid stimulation. That's now thought to be more hurtful than helpful, says Nicole D. Reams, MD, FAAN, director of the concussion program at the NorthShore University HealthSystem in the Chicago area. Instead, people should avoid or minimize certain activities.
“Most concussions will heal on their own with time and relative rest, meaning limiting time on computers and smartphones and watching TV, fewer cognitive tasks, reduced physical exertion, and taking breaks if symptoms get worse,” Dr. Reams says. “I counsel my patients to watch for red flags such as repeated vomiting, worsening imbalance with walking, or new difficulties with one side of the body such as numbness or weakness. These may indicate a bleed in the brain and require a trip to the nearest emergency department.”
Advocating for Coverage
A year after Scurry sustained her concussion, Women's Professional Soccer folded, and she filed a case with the state workers' compensation commission in Maryland, where the league had been headquartered. “That,” Scurry says, “is when the trouble really began. When it comes to workers' comp, they deny, deny, deny. I learned that this is their M.O.”
Deeply in debt, Scurry pawned her two gold medals for $18,000. When she looks back now, she wonders if race and sex had something to do with how she was treated. “A lot of doctors don't believe Black women,” she says. “I was not believed, and I know that because they told me so.”
She had to retain a lawyer, who helped her secure a second opinion and temporary total disability benefits. “Every time I wanted something, I had to go to court, and my insurance company knew that,” she says.
In January 2013, Scurry finally got the go-ahead to make an appointment that she'd requested more than a year earlier with a Baltimore neurologist. The 2010 blow that started it all had been to her right temple, but when the neurologist touched behind her left ear, “it was so painful I started crying,” she says. She was also relieved: For the first time, a doctor had a theory about what was happening to her. He thought the initial injury had also impacted her neck and damaged her occipital nerve, which runs from the spine through the neck to the back of the head.
Such damage is not uncommon, says Michael Jaffee, MD, FAAN, chair of the department of neurology at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Postconcussive headaches can often be traced to compression of the greater or lesser occipital nerve as it exits the head. The compression is often caused by neck muscles that are in spasm from the trauma, says Dr. Jaffee, author of Navigating the Challenges of Concussion from the Brain & Life Books series.
In most cases, the headaches can be addressed by physical therapy and topical muscle creams, muscle relaxants, and headache medications, or in-office trigger point injections, which involve inserting a local anesthetic directly into the knot of muscles. More invasive procedures, Dr. Jaffee says, include using radio frequencies to destroy the occipital nerve, or surgery (like Scurry had) to remove whatever is compressing the nerve—possibly scar tissue, fascia, or blood vessels.
In her battle for insurance coverage for the operation, Scurry hired a public relations professional, Chryssa Zizos, who advocated on behalf of the Olympian receiving her benefits. Zizos later helped Scurry buy back her gold medals—and on June 1, 2018, the two got married in St. Lucia.
In 2017, Scurry was the first Black player and first female goalie inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame. Today she is a popular motivational speaker, and her national soccer team jersey is in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. She's also a concussion awareness advocate who has testified before Congress many times.
In her speaking engagements, Scurry shares stories of overcoming adversity as a Black, gay woman and as the survivor of a traumatic brain injury. She often stays to talk with attendees one-to-one and pose for photos. At almost every event, someone from the audience ends up crying in her arms, thankful for her survival and her inspiration. “The person will stand there, and our eyes will meet, and I'll say, ‘I know. You're the one I'm here for.' And we hug and then they just break down, because I can see in their eyes how much pain they're still in.”
Scurry encourages those audience members to contact her via her website and tell her how she can help. “Maybe they have had a concussion or are dealing with depression, or they have a kid who's gay and struggling,” she says. “Something in my speech has touched them, and they come to me.”
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