Cheering parents and teammates sit on the sidelines, players call to one another when they are open and a black and white ball darts across the field. This particular soccer tournament was fast-paced and aggressive – and the place where Emma Vaughn-Matthews hit a few fateful headers that changed her soccer career for good.
Vaughn-Matthews, a Grant senior, played soccer for most of her life. But a serious concussion in January of 2012 meant she was extremely hesitant to play the sport again. Though soccer was a huge part of her life, Vaughn-Matthews’s injury was a huge game changer.
Vaughn-Matthews was born October 12, 1996 in Portland, Oregon. She grew up with two moms, Stephanie Vaughn and Karry Matthews, and a younger brother named Eric. She was always tall and mature for her age. She filled her days with playing imaginary games, reading and playing sports.
When Vaughn-Matthews was five years old, she began playing soccer. After five years at a recreational level, 10-year-old Vaughn-Matthews joined club soccer, which is a more organized type of soccer with tournaments and leagues. “That was really fun for awhile, and then I started not liking it so much,” she recalls. The coaches were way more serious, and the games were at a much higher intensity. The lighthearted fun that had once made her love the sport was gone. “It started being really like intense and competitive and I wasn’t loving it so much,” says Vaughn-Matthews.
But though soccer was becoming more rough and intense the longer she played, Vaughn-Matthews stuck with it. Soccer was a part of her life, and she couldn’t quite give it up yet.
In early 2012, during a competitive weekend tournament, Vaughn-Matthews began to really get into the games. She followed her coach’s instructions and took almost every header opportunity that came her way. She remembers being much more aggressive in this tournament than usual. Little did she know, all the headers had caused a serious injury.
It wasn’t until a few days later that she became more aware of the headache she’d had since the game. She spoke with her moms, who are both doctors, and they came to the conclusion that she had a pretty serious concussion. Even though both of her parents are in the medical field, they decided to get another opinion and had her tested for a concussion in school; her bad test results confirmed her parents’ theory.
Vaughn-Matthews only recalls feeling “crazy.” The concussion specialist from OHSU that they spoke with wanted her on complete rest: no TV, no school and especially no soccer. However, her parents did send her to school that week.
Looking back, Vaughn-Matthews thinks attending school was a mistake. She wasn’t fully aware while at school and only remembers writing random things and talking to herself during class. The concussion left her dazed and moody during most of the healing process. Her mother remembers she would be crying one minute, and then laughing the next.
Vaughn-Matthews also went against the strict instructions given by the specialist to “never play soccer again.” About two weeks after the tournament, she returned to practice. She was dedicated to the sport and didn’t want to quit just yet. But this didn’t last long.
“That was really fun for awhile, and then I started not liking it so much”- Emma Vaughn-Matthews
Six weeks after the concussion, another incident occurred: she broke her leg near her ankle while doing a slide tackle during a game. That marked the end of her soccer career. She was also playing basketball at the time but gave it up along with any sports with a concussion risk.
Her parents note how club soccer had gotten particularly rough for their daughter, and they’re glad she isn’t playing soccer and risking getting hurt again. After both injuries, it just seemed like the time to do something else. Vaughn-Matthews had already fallen out of love with soccer over the years, and the injuries were the tipping point.
Today, Vaughn-Matthews plays tennis and runs cross country, both “concussion-free sports.” She enjoys painting and volunteering, and she is trying to get back to her love of reading. One of the only side effects of the concussion that is present in her daily life is in reading: as she reads, the ends of words sometimes float around the page. But she has healed otherwise and continues to succeed in sports and academics.
The other side effect of the concussion is a little harder to shake: she now fears getting another concussion during sports. The concussion specialist said there was now almost a 100% chance that she could get another serious concussion playing sports. The injury has really changed her approach to sports, making it much harder to be aggressive and get into the game.
But Vaughn-Matthews does say that though her experience changed her approach to certain sports in a negative way, it changed her approach to life in a positive way. While on rest for her injury, she was uninvolved and missing out on a lot of things. She says she now appreciates the little things in life much more and is much more open minded. On this shift, she says: “It just kind of happened. I think it was just a random side effect of it.”
