Shardonee Hayes, Liz Shelton, Paige Whipple, Erin Williamson and Kendra Dahlke.
Five players on the Arizona women’s volleyball team, five concussions over the last five weeks.
“It’s so random that we’ve had so many in a short period of time,” said UA coach Dave Rubio, whose Wildcats host Colorado on Friday night at McKale Center. “I feel like I should go buy a lottery ticket — isn’t it the Mega Powerball up to like almost 2 million dollars? … Maybe the numbers I pick are everyone’s number on their uniform that’s gotten nailed.”
Volleyball typically isn’t the sport people associate with concussions. But they do happen, and the 25th-ranked Wildcats aren’t alone. Both Mercer (2015) and North Carolina (2017) lost four players to concussions.
Complicating matters is the nature of concussions. Symptoms affect every athlete differently, and everybody seems to recover at their own pace.
Hayes was the first Wildcat to suffer a concussion this season. She was hit in the head — on the same spot — five times. Her symptoms included dizziness, headaches, nausea, and aversion to light.
Shelton was injured in practice the week of the Wildcats’ Pac-12 opener against Arizona State. She returned to practice Oct. 9, but has not been cleared to play.
“We’re just lucky, but not in the best way,” said Shelton. “I know concussions aren’t necessarily that common in volleyball, but for us we’re just being found by the right balls at the wrong time.
“Symptoms I suffered from were difficulty concentrating, headaches, nausea, feeling very tired, and just feeling really slow and like I was in a mental fog.”
Next was Whipple. She was hit in the head twice; once during serve-and-pass drills, the second time off a block. Both occurred during a match at Oregon State, which was supposed to be a special time. Whipple grew up in nearby Salem.
Whipple said she “didn’t feel anything until the night we got home; I had a headache.”
“Then I woke up the next morning, I felt, honestly, like a bobblehead. I had never felt that before, because I never had a concussion. So I thought, ‘Ah, something might be going on,’” she said. “Mostly dizziness, headache and my eyes — I had a really hard time with light, inside and outside.”
Whipple missed the following weekend’s home losses to Washington and Washington State, but was back for last week’s matches in Los Angeles.
Williamson was the only Wildcat to suffer a concussion off the court. She hit her chin while lifting weights.
Dahlke suffered her concussion seven points into last Friday’s match against UCLA. She was kneed in the head while diving for the ball.
The Bruins swept the Wildcats, who lost the three sets by a total of seven points.
Arizona is 14-6 overall and 3-5 in Pac-12 play, having lost its last four conference matches.
“Obviously it’s frustrating,” Rubio said. “I told the team that we have enough talent to beat teams and to win. Though I think subconsciously sometimes when you are down two starters (Shelton and Dahlke), when things start to get a little hard, they let go of the rope.
“I saw that in the USC in Game 4 (on Sunday). I hadn’t seen that before, but I think it’s, ‘Hey we’re supposed to lose, we don’t have everybody. So it’s OK to lose. We have an excuse.’ I don’t think they really say that to themselves, but subconsciously we feel sorry for ourselves. And obviously we can’t do that.”
Still, Rubio is hoping for a strong finish. The Wildcats aren’t even at the halfway point of conference play, which means there’s time to get better both on the court and in the trainer’s room.
“For me, just from believing in the process and being faithful to the process eventually we’ll get healthy — in the second half of the season is when we are really going to be good,” Rubio said. “When we get everybody back, and our system starts to really click. And now we are better because the players who normally wouldn’t play have had to play and now we have more experience and more depth.”
