Curtis Wrestles With Concussion Recovery

Curtis is a middle schooler at Corona Foothills Middle School in Vail. He has always been active and grew up playing football and wrestling since he was 4 years old. While being the active kid that he is, in March 2017 he fell off his bike and hit his head. He had a “mental shutdown” and didn’t remember what had happened and woke up in the hospital. Had to take a big break from school and recovery took months.

When he got back to school his classmates asked him why he was gone. Curtis always made up funny stories like, “tigers attacked me and I fell off a cliff.” Curtis’ sense of humor was always apparent to us when we were working with him at SPARCC. He was constantly cracking jokes and even told me that I could ask anyone at his school and they would say he is the funniest 7th grader.

After recovering from his concussion Curtis went back to sports and sustained another concussion while playing football in July of 2017. Then in January of 2018 while at wrestling tournament Curtis got his third concussion. He described the injury as “cannon balling” on to the mat while trying to throw someone down. He recovered quickly from these injures and was back to normal in a few weeks.

Even though he was feeling better, in July of 2018 Curtis passed out while in class. He then started coming in to SPARCC. He liked coming in for his appointments because they were different than other doctor visits and he liked Dr. Mo and all the exercise testing. After four months of hard work he was cleared to go back to wrestling!

Curtis was able to compete in the Vail School District’s Desert Valley League Tournament and defended his 2018 championship by winning again! He also participated in the 2019 All-City Championships which included 21 schools in the Tucson area and was able to get 3rd place overall! His dream is to one day wrestle at Penn state and win an NCAA National Championship.