Ask your coach: "What do I need to do to get more playing time?"

Also, "What problems do you see in my play during practices?"

As a post concussion survivor, you will be the last person to recognize your difficulties. This is the most frustrating problem with PCS. You may even think that you are trying harder and doing better but all they see is you making more mistakes because of the added pressure you have put on yourself.

Get a team score sheet and try to keep track of the play. Shots, rebounds, assists, blocks, passes, steals, inbounds, etc. This will show you how good your brain is working. I don't know the usual terminology. Keep track of each player using whatever abbreviations you can memorize.

I did this for soccer. I was team manager and statistician after having to give up playing soccer because of a concussion. I was kept busy because our team was fast and outscored our opponents over 140 goals scored to 1 goal against us for the regular season. Would have been state champs but our team went to the bachelor party for our right inside striker (right inside forward back then) the night before the big game. All got drunk and were hung over for the game. Our team had beat the state champs in club soccer play.

I had to watch this fabulous season from the sidelines in street clothes. I know what it means to give up a sport. I changed to track and cross country and was one of the best in the state. The conditioning from soccer gave me great distance running skills.

btw, You will have a better chance at a college scholarship with track and cross country than soccer and basketball. Work out with an Ergo machine and you can get a scholarship in rowing/crew.

Mark has great ideas for U 2 think about.

I would just ask the coach "How's my playing these days?" or "What should I be doing to improve?"

This opens the door for the coach to talk directly to you.

I know you think asking is the hard part, but just open up your ears and mind and LISTEN to what the coach tells U. Give the coach that opportunity to address any health concerns.

Please don't lie to your coach. A coach can be a good friend too.

It's good you're thinking about these things now. That's a good sign. It'll be OK....

Get some rest and try not to fret too much. Rest is important.

whats rowing or crew?

Rowing or crew is a sport where four or eight athletes row a small racing boat, called a shell down a river in competition. My son rowed in college for Seattle Pacific University. He traveled to Philadelphia and rowed in a national race too. The women's team went to NCAA Nationals in Atlanta and did quite well.

Since Crew is not a common high school sport, most colleges recruit from the freshman class. The men are usually limited to a club team due to Title 9 limits (the schools have to have as many women athletes and scholarships as they have for men) This makes for many opportunities for women to get scholarships in rowing. Most get them for their sophomore year after rowing as freshman.

A good health club /gym usually has a device called an Ergo. It is a rowing exercise machine that calibrates how strong you are and how much endurance you have. You can post your scores to the colleges and get offers without ever getting in a boat.

Crew is a great way for women to maintain a fabulous figure. It can take hard work but the camaraderie is much stronger that a sport like basketball and soccer since all of the crew are required for every competition and practice. There is no riding the bench in Crew.

Here is a link to the Wiki about ergo machines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_rower

Read the whole article and you will see how you can use the machine to get a spot on a Crew.

Rowing is one of the best fitness exercises there is. It blows the doors off spinning on a stationary bike. If you have ever seen the movie with Meryl Streep called The River Wild, it opens with her rowing on the river in Cambridge/Brookline Massachusetts.

Check out your favorite colleges and see if they have a Crew. Tall women often do very well in Crew, so basketball players are a good fit.

You can continue to row for all of your life, especially if you live near a river or large body of water. You can row singles, doubles, fours and eights and in different weight classes, lightweights and open weight.

It would also be a good exercise for rehabing a concussion since you can work up to your maximum effort. The adrenaline rush can be amazing.

And, no risk of a concussion.

I asked her after practice today and she told me she was just hesitant to put me in because she doesnt like the damage im doing running up and down the court. i understan i guess. shes a good coach and i like her so i guess i see what shes saying. on the other hand though its like i do dirlls everyday at practice where im running up and down the court and if im doing better you cant keep me out forever. i dont know tomorrows our last game so im just hoping to play even if its just a minute or two. through all the struggles this season im still going to miss basketball.

i finally realized why i keep thinking writing down my symptoms in a log is not really going to help. they dont hardly last long enough for me to write them down anymore. before it was an all day thing but now there are very few things that trigger them longer than a minute really. i dont go in to the doctor again for a while so what should i do about the symptom log?

Dear Soccer14,

I'm on this forum as a fellow pcs sufferer, but I too was a fanatic hoopster in high school planning on college play as a given. The beginning of my Senior year I was hit by a car and suffered multiple injuries (one of my concussions plus a whole lot more), spent all that fall in physical therapy, desparately trying to be able to get back on the court (and pretty ticked off as I watched the cheerleader-who-hit-me-while-she-was-chatting-with-her-friend-in-the-passenger-seat jumping around across the court ;-) while I watched games from the bench. I felt so robbed. I was able to play the second half of the season, with lots of pain. I still had opportunities to play in college but I turned them down and took an academic scholarship instead. Why? I knew my body wouldn't tolerate another 4 years of hard core hoops/abuse very well with my residual injuries, it just hurt too much to play. It was an extremely difficult decision to make, especially that first year of college when I would watch games and know I could have been down there. After a while, I decided to stop torturing myself and get on with my life. Anyways, my point in sharing this with you is that looking back now, 20 years later, I don't regret my decision to stop playing at all. It isn't what I would have chosen, given a choice, but we just have to deal with what we're given, that's life. Sure, it was super hard and painful to give up what I'd been dreaming of, and planning, for so many years because of that accident, but I have no regrets. Looking back now and dealing with messed up knees and ankles (just the result of hard play) plus accident residuals and current PCS, I kind of wish I would have focused on sports that were less punishing (a couple of my prior concussions happened on the court), even though I loved it so much. You only have one body, no refunds or exchanges. I know it's really hard at your age to think long term, and it seems like you'll never be as old as I am, but you've got to remember that your life post high school and college is much, much longer and for most of us even better! Don't be doing things that will negatively impact your quality of life, it ISN"T worth it! You are young and have a great chance of recovery if you let your body heal. It may seem like the end of the world right now to be missing a season but it's not, you'll play better down the road if you give yourself a chance to recover. Your teams will survive without you, seriously! Be mature and responsible enough to give yourself the chance to heal. With the type of symptoms you've described, there is no way you're playing at the top of your game, that is probably more obvious to everyone else than to you. If you keep going the way you are, there will be no chance of playing in college in either sport anyway, so give yourself a break, tell your parents, coach and doctor the truth, and let your brain heal. You've had excellent advice from folks with lots of painful experience. You would be wise to heed it. You've had so many responses because people don't want you to suffer long term. Maybe your life will take a different direction like mine did and you'll realize it's okay because there are lots of ways to enjoy your life and be successful and happy...I wish you all the best in your recovery.

Take Care,

Becca

'nuf said by Becca, soccer14,

Did you understand that?

Just write when it happens. Put the duration if you want. Just write.

Soccer: I have a couple of questions for you. Before I ask, though, I would like to offer an observation from my limited perspective. I would say your symptoms seem to be getting better at the same rate as you aren't playing as much (3-day weekend, sitting time out in game, etc). Keep your log going then as you increase physical activities again see if they increase. Also, have you tracked your symptoms with your monthly cycle? My daughter definately sees more symptoms premenstrually. Give it some thought. I'm trying to schedule hormone testing now.

Now for my questions:

1) You took two months off school and out of sports last year, is that right? If so, was there any specific thing that you think brought your symptoms back?

2) Were you feeling 100% before you went back to sports?

3) Did you gradually go back to exercise or did you jump back in full force?

I think of you often. Your not playing as much is probably my fault, as I've been praying for your safety and health

yea after i first got it out was out of school for 3 weeks and i missed half the basketball season and the entire soccer season that spring. yea i think i got some more concussions. at one practice over the summer a girl kicked the ball as hard as she could straight up into my face from literally 3 feet away. it was an accident of course she felt so bad. then later that summer i woke up on my kitchen floor which is tile and dont have any idea what happened cant remember or anything. since then ive gotten some knocks that i know just set me back longer.

i think yea i was feeling pretty good it was just a gradual thing where i just kept getting worse little by little. it probably didnt help that i suddenly had the stress of school and soccer practice everyday to just make it worse.

um i cant really remember i know i worked back into basketball practice slowly but occasionally i would work out on my own?