Champion Goalkeeper Scurry Coping Years After Head Injury

Briana Scurry was the rock of the most significant women's sports team the world has ever known. She was the goalkeeper on the victorious 1999 U.S. Women's World Cup soccer team, the uber-intense athlete who "locked out 90,000 screaming people" to make an improbable lunging save on China's third penalty kick in the final.

If Scurry hadn't done that, Brandi Chastain wouldn't have won the World Cup moments later, or whipped off her shirt. No, without Scurry's save, the penalty kicks would have just kept going, tied 5-5.

Today, Scurry is talking about the focus she no longer possesses. She sits alone in her dark apartment for hours on end. She can't get through a day without napping. When she drives to the grocery store, she writes down exactly where she parked her car. When she gets inside the store, she often can't remember why she's there.

On April 25, 2010, playing in goal for Washington in a Women's Professional Soccer game in Philadelphia, Scurry came out for a routine low shot to her left.

"I've done it a million times before," she said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "I have my eyes on the ball, and from my right-hand side as my head is low, trying to scoop this ball up, a player tries to clip in front of me and nick the ball with her toe but instead of hitting the ball, her knee crashes into the right side of my head."

Scurry fell to the ground and blacked out, still cradling the ball in her arms. Moments later, she haltingly rose to her feet. The referee told everyone to play on. No foul was called.

"Then my world started to shift on me," she said. "The back of my teammates' jerseys got fuzzy. I started seeing two balls out there. I was a little bit wobbly and I started to feel sick to my stomach. But as an athlete, I said to myself, 'Shake this off, I'm fine, I'm fine.'"

The half soon ended. Scurry staggered to her bench. She was in trouble, and everyone knew it. A doctor soon told her she would not play in the second half, so she sat on the bench, "waiting for the clouds to go away."

They never did. "I have not played soccer since," said Scurry, now 42.

"That was the end."

It is one of the myths of the mainstream sports media that concussions belong only to men, most of them football players. In fact, studies show that women and girls are more likely than men and boys to suffer concussions in sports they both play, such as soccer, basketball and baseball/softball. And in those cases, they also are more likely to suffer in private, a far cry from the attention NFL players command.

This was Scurry's fate, a story she has not told until now. She had two previous concussions, in 2007 and 2008, but was checked out and came back from each within a couple of days. This time, in addition to all the traditional symptoms that have never ended, she experienced something more: sharp, shooting pain from behind her left ear. "It has never gone away," she said. "Right now as we're talking, I have a Level 4 headache."

She tried to work through it, becoming the general manager of the former WPS Washington franchise when it moved to South Florida in 2011, then commentating for ESPN on the Women's World Cup that summer from Germany. She kept her condition a secret, studying notes in her hotel room for hours. "I felt like I was going through quicksand," Scurry said.

The doctors she saw gave her no answers. "I started to wonder if I was always going to be someone who sat around with the shades drawn and had to take a nap every afternoon," she said. "I became severely depressed because I started to think this was going to be my life. Every day I woke up hoping I would get my life back, but then the day ended in so much pain and I still wasn't me."

This past February, though, hope came in the form of a new diagnosis. Scurry was found to have an inflammation of the occipital nerve behind her left ear, which was caused by that knee to the other side of her head. She is scheduled to undergo radical surgery Oct.17 at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, which she hopes will eliminate her severe headaches and allow her to begin to return to her normal routine of speaking, coaching and public appearances.

"When I get through this, I want to stand up and talk for people who are dealing with these issues," Scurry said. "Nobody can understand how we feel, how emotional it is. It's one thing to blow out your knee. Everyone can see that.

"This is so different, but I want people to know that after all this darkness, you actually can have light again."