30-year old David Monsalve has been a professional soccer goalkeeper for 13 years. He has had many injuries in his career. The scariest was when he got a concussion. It was in a practice when he was playing for Toronto FC.
“A ball come straight to my face. Being a goalkeeper obviously you assume the risk. I saw the stars.”
At 18 he was the youngest goalkeeper to play in the MLS (Major League Soccer). After his concussion, he never played another game for Toronto FC.
“Initially it’s kind of like the cartoons you kind of see the stars and birds going around.”
The Toronto FC athletic therapist diagnosed him with a mild concussion. That is something that no athlete wants to hear. at the time he was the youngest goalkeeper at the age of 18 and the was he last training with TFC and never played another game with them.
Concussions are not uncommon in sports, according to the government of Canada, 46,000 athletes get concussions every year.Should be: Soccer does not have a lot of concussions compared to other sports. It has only 250 year.
After Monsalve was released by TFC he continued his own intense training. The challenges did not stop there. One of the biggest challenges he faced, was going back on the field and facing shooters.
He played for multiple clubs like Inter Turku, FC Edmonton, Ottawa Fury, and many more. He also plays for the Canadian national team. Now David Monsalve is going into his 14 years of playing professionally. He is currently running a program to get back to his community, by allowing kids the opportunity to make it professional just like him. He says “You always have a fear that once you get injuries that are going to occur again”.
Dr. Alex St-Pierre a sports chiropractor as well the co-owner and founder of the clinic called Strong.
According to the government of Canada, one out of two people has little to no knowledge on concussions. So, what exactly is a concussion?
“It’s a mild traumatic brain injury, so what happens is there is traction to the brain or the neck which creates cells dysregulation in the brain so that the cells are no longer able to do their job” says Dr. Alex St-Pierre.
Dr. Alex St-Pierre tells me that is hard to identify if someone has a concussion because there are 22 different symptoms and in isolation, they could be several different things. Some of the symptoms include nausea, fatigue, dizziness, and the list continue.
One thing that Dr. St-Pierre continuously mentioned is that we have a lot of research on concussion but it’s still not enough. There’re still areas where they’re not sure the effect that concussion can have
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