Spring is right around the corner, and when spring rolls around so do college athlete commits. The transition from playing a high school sport to a college sport is a big step in propelling an athletic career forward, but what happens when those committed athletes later suffer injuries?
In college sports, rules guide injury support. From hardship waivers to medical leaves, avenues exist to help sidelined athletes. Every injury is unique, and every person is unique, therefore every injured Cal Poly athlete deals with a unique case under Cal Poly and NCAA rules.
Keith Marco came to Cal Poly as an injured football athlete taking a “redshirt season” his freshman year, meaning he did not play in any games due to previous injuries. Marco had been playing in football leagues since he was six years old. When he was in high school, Marco tore his ACL twice, leaving him to work towards recovery into his first college season.
Eventually, Marco got back to playing.
“I kind of just hit a guy weird,” Marco said when describing his injury. “And then I felt something go in my shoulder. And I tore my labrum.”
Cal Poly had already decided against offering Marco a scholarship for the Mustangs’ football team due to concerns about his previous injuries. Despite this, when Marco suffered a torn labrum during his time at Cal Poly, the university did not abandon Marco.
“They covered all my medical costs,” Marco said. “They still gave me food. I was still around the guys. They were investing a lot in me, even though I was injured and wasn’t playing.”
Marco said his situation was different because he didn’t have a scholarship. Without money to consider, the coaching staff helped Marco stay on the team in an assistant role.
“I wasn’t ready to leave I kind of kept contributing in any way I could until it was really time for me to leave,” he said.
The NCAA and Cal Poly have sets of rules and regulations when deciding what to do when a student-athlete suffers an injury, but according to Keri Mendoza, Cal Poly Senior Associate Athletic Director, “The NCAA really allows us to make the decision, they allow us to leave it up to the coach’s discretion.”
According to the Cal Poly student-athlete handbook, there are forms that athletes can complete if they suffer an injury that is season-ending. One option is the use of a hardship waiver, which grants a student-athlete an additional year of competition, allowing them to take a “red-shirt” season to recover from their injury.
Another form is the medical absence waiver. According to the Cal Poly student-athlete handbook, “If a student-athlete becomes injured or suffers an illness that prevents them from finishing a quarter or enrolling full-time, a medical absence waiver may be pursued.”
In Marco’s case, he received what he considered a generous amount of support from Cal Poly. However, Marco did not pursue the use of any Cal Poly-provided medical leaves or retirements. He decided to stay on the team for a time in an “assistant” role until he decided to leave full-time.
“So some students are placed on medical leave for a short time, but if an injury is bad enough to stop an athlete from competing at all, then the coach has the option to kind of choose whether or not they want to place a student on medical retirement and keep supporting their scholarship,” Mendoza said.
So the question of what happens to injured student-athletes at Cal Poly has no one answer. For Tommy Griffin, another former Cal Poly football athlete, his time as a teammate looked a little different.
Griffin suffered a total of six head injuries resulting in severe concussions during his time playing tackle football. He suffered three in high school and three more once he began playing for Cal Poly. Unlike Marco, regardless of his previous injuries, Griffin was offered a full scholarship.
Suffering from head injuries is no foreign topic when discussing football. As Griffin dealt with his injuries, Cal Poly provided what Griffin called “concussion therapy.”
“They offered some stuff…I don’t know what the standard of concussion therapy is… I just know that what I was doing felt very gimmicky,” he said “And like, I didn’t think it was actually helping me. It had me doing very elementary exercises that I didn’t think correlated with the therapy and rehabilitation of my injury.”
While the medical support in Griffin’s experience did not impress him, the financial and individual emotional support from the coaching staff exceeded Griffin’s expectations once his time as a competing athlete at Cal Poly ended.
“They would call me and just say, ‘Hey, how you doing? How’s life? Everything good?’ It wasn’t like medical or physical… it was more just seeing how I’m doing not being a part of the program anymore,” Griffin said.
He described his financial situation regarding Cal Poly football as “unique.” Most injured athletes can be put on medical retirement or leave to keep getting resources to support them despite not being on the field. Not many choose to withdraw from medical retirement and give up their scholarships instead.
Griffin said in his case he willingly gave up his scholarship in a promise to come back to the team as a walk-on, surrendering his scholarship money to a playing athlete. Unfortunately, that plan didn’t happen when Griffin quit the team — he ended up staying off the team.
“I just couldn’t see myself being a part of the program,” he said. “If I wasn’t playing, I didn’t want to just, hang around, it just felt weird. I was kind of out of it… checked out at that point. So it was definitely on my own terms that I exited.”
Losing the ability to contribute to a sport you have played for most of your life comes with some hardships mentally. According to the American College of Sports Medicine, “In collegiate athletes, a serious injury is a predictor of lower quality of life in domains including mental health, physical function, emotional role, and vitality.”
Furthermore, the NCAA states that each member school is charged with facilitating an environment that reinforces physical and mental health within athletics. This is done through ensuring access to appropriate resources.
Mendoza said the current support Cal Poly offers involves the Cal Poly health center — which is open to all of Cal Poly — and Performance Specialist Jeff Troesch who is specific to student-athletes.
“I think it would be nice to have some sort of support group where athletes could talk to each other about their injuries or struggles, but again we don’t have anything like that currently,” Mendoza said.
Troesch said he’s somewhat of a limited resource since he works with many professional athletes and other schools taking up much of his time.
With Troesch’s busy schedule, a lot of injured athletes get referred to Cal Poly counseling services. He said he wants and needs more support systems for Cal Poly student-athletes who face injuries, admitting that because the ratio of athletes to professional help services is so outweighed, Cal Poly is “probably, a little bit, underserving their needs.”
“I would just say more staff in this sort of area could be helpful. I think with who we have, and what we do, we do the best we can, but, you know, there’s certainly more demand for us than we can meet,” Troesch said.