Multi-Sport Ashley Back in Action

Something a basketball player dreads every practice is having to run “suicides”. Sprinting up and down the court touching all the lines. All players from Michael Jordan to Candace Parker have had to partake in the ritual. Ashley, a freshman at Desert View High School, was running and reached down to touch the line when suddenly her head bashed in to the hip of her teammate. She continued running but everything had gone “white” and she had a headache and felt unbalanced.

Ashley tried to fight off the symptoms and pretend everything was ok for about a week, even though she was having lots of headaches and was extremely fatigued. Eventually she decided to own up to her symptoms and got sent to SPARCC. She felt comfortable here because of the “cool environment.” The hardest part of recovery for Ashley was staying away from her phone. It was also tough for her to be on the sidelines at basketball, but her teammates were very supportive and were able to joke around with her.

While Ashley was recovering she wasn’t able to keep up with her full plate of activities including track and field and playing percussion in the marching band, so some of the new things she started to do that didn’t aggravate her symptoms were coloring pages with geometric designs and listen to more music. After a few months of patience and work on recovery, she is now back playing the sports she loves!