Writing Feature Articles - Step 1 - Lesson 1 | Page 58

Writing Feature Articles - Lesson
Writing Feature Articles - Handout . a

Experienced

Name: ________________________________________ Date: ___________________

. a: Feature Articles Packet

(page

of

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Special report: The dangers of adolescents playing football
with concussions
By By Tom Wyrwich
Seattle Times staff reporter
CAMANO ISLAND — Ben Zipp’s memories return
in ?ashes.
He hears a helicopter roar, feels himself rising into
the sky.
He sees the paramedics rush him inside the
hospital.
He feels the board under him as he is strapped in
for a CT scan.
Then Zipp woke up into a world where he might
not ever play football again. On Sept. 12, he
suffered a subdural hematoma — bleeding of
the brain — in the second quarter of Stanwood’s
second game.

MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Ben Zipp of Stanwood likely won’t play football again after hiding his

Zipp left the ?eld with throbbing pain in his head
concussion symptoms
before his legs and arms went numb. He collapsed
on a bench and had seizures. A longtime friend cut off his jersey as the trainer put Zipp in a neck brace. He was
airlifted to Harborview Medical Center, where he was in intensive care for three weeks.
He lives with headaches that never go away and a fog in his mind that makes studying nearly impossible. And he
lives with questions of what he could have done to avoid it.
Before that game, Zipp had felt several symptoms of a concussion, including headaches and nausea. He sat out
from contact twice that week, but not on game day.
“I kept it all in,” he says. “I didn’t say much.”
Concussions in high-school football, like Zipp’s, are nothing unusual. Studies estimate that as many as 47 percent
of high-school football players have suffered a concussion, and 35 percent have suffered at least two.
But the developing adolescent brain needs time to recover. And when Zipp attempted to play with a concussion,
while his brain was still vulnerable, he put himself at risk for a catastrophic brain injury.
A look through the past 15 years ?nds several Washington families whose sons have died or suffered severe, lifealtering injuries. In almost every instance, the teenager attempted to hide the symptoms of his concussion to keep
playing.
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