Part IV: Sports injuries leave scars that aren't seen
Every time an athlete at any level steps on the field, ice, mat or court, there’s a possibility that any given game could be their last of the season — or their career.
Historically, take Washington quarterback Joe Theismann’s compound fracture of his right tibia and fibula against the New York Giants on Monday Night Football in 1985, or then-Los Angeles Raiders running back Bo Jackson’s hip fracture in 1991, for example. Jackson was a once-in-a-lifetime talent — a two-sport athlete that found success in Major League Baseball with the Kansas City Royals and in the National Football League with the Raiders.
In contemporary times, there’s Seattle Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor, who suffered a neck injury against the Arizona Cardinals during a Thursday Night Football game in 2017. Most recently, there was Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s sudden cardiac arrest in January.
Simply put, injuries are a part of the game. They happen. Freak accidents happen.
The emotional toll of recovering from, and sometimes playing through, these injuries sometimes leave scars that are not all physical.
In Northern Arizona University freshman and former wrestler Tony Miele’s instance, that is exactly the case.
Miele was participating in a typical offseason practice following his junior wrestling season at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona. Miele had come just one match away from the state tournament that season. With that in mind, he had high aspirations for his senior year.
He had been wrestling since he was 14 years old, after having watched his older brother on the mat during his high school career. He came into high school as a football player, but his future wrestling coach, Jake Allen, began pestering him about joining his team from the very onset of his freshman year.
As in, on day one.
Miele was walking to football practice when Allen gave his recruiting pitch from his car.
“My coach drives past me and he’s like ‘you’re coming to wrestle for my team right?’” Miele said.
As time went on, Allen kept asking and asking and asking. Eventually, Miele decided that he was “definitely going out” for the wrestling team.
For someone who had not been involved in the sport before, Miele said he remembers how much of a culture shock the transition from football to wrestling was.
“Our high school wasn’t that great at football, so it was just kind of us getting beat every week and we didn’t want to deal with it,” Miele said. “But wrestling, we had the mentality that we were going to win and we kept going and it was just a lot more, first off, just a completely different practice style.”
Fast forward two years and that typical offseason practice went from routine to life-changing in an instant.
“It was just kind of a freak accident”
The team was practicing a variation of the bear crawl, which in this version, is a two-person exercise where one person drags the other across the floor while they are holding onto their neck.
“I ended up going head to head with a kid, and as soon as I hit, I guess I just hit the right spot on my head, left me from my neck down, unable to move,” Miele said. “So I was laying on top of my partner and at the time he thought I was just kind of joking and he wasn’t sure, and then he realized I was just kind of dead weight on top of him.”
A certified athletic trainer was not present at the practice. Since it was an offseason practice, Miele said it was not an Arizona Interscholastic Association-sanctioned event. However, one of the coaches at Red Mountain, another one of the schools at the practice, also worked as a firefighter. They took control of the situation and kept Miele calm.
Miele remembers immediately thinking of the worst-case scenario.
“Honestly, I thought I was going to be paralyzed from the waist down,” Miele said. “I was really scared because my legs took the longest [amount of time to regain feeling], or at least one of my sides was going to be messed up because I ended up getting my right side back first, but my left side was still really bad. My right side wasn’t much better. My grip was really weak and all that, and I thought it was over.”
When Miele first went to the hospital, he was diagnosed with a stinger — a common contact sport injury named for a burning pain that occurs when shoulder and neck nerves are pressed together after an impact.
Miele had several follow-up appointments, one of which was at a concussion center. After explaining to them what happened, it turned out that he was misdiagnosed.
“They’re like, ‘you have a spinal cord contusion,’ which is a 10 times worse injury than what we were told,” Miele said. “So then they’re like, ‘you need to see a neurosurgeon, not a neurologist,’ and then we go to the neurologist because we had an appointment and he’s like ‘you need to go to the hospital now.’”
Miele had surgery a week after the injury.
Playing through pain
No matter what sport it is or the level it is played at, the desire to grind and play through pain is the norm.
Take Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes — widely recognized as the current face of the NFL. Late in the divisional round of the playoffs vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars, linebacker Arden Key landed on Mahomes’ ankle, leaving the star quarterback limping off the field. Mahomes would return to the game and lead the team to an AFC Championship win over the Cincinnati Bengals the next week, on practically one leg.
The 27-year-old spoke about his mindset playing through the injury in a midweek press conference prior to the Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
“I definitely move around better than I was moving two weeks ago, and so just trying to continue to get the treatment and the rehab and get to as close as I can to 100% and then rely on some adrenaline to let me do a little bit extra when I’m on the field,” Mahomes said.
Mahomes aggravated the injury during the Super Bowl right before halftime and, for a moment, the Chiefs’ chances looked grim. However, he stayed in the game and led the team to its second championship in four years.
There is academic research on this idea, a 2012 research study by Eric Anderson et. al published in the journal Men and Masculinities. In the study, titled “Examining Media Contestation of Masculinity and Head Trauma in the National Football League,” the authors note that football has long been associated with men sacrificing their body for the sake of the team and glory.
“Playing through pain” is something current Northern Arizona University student and former Burbank High School football player Tyler Murphy knows all too well. He started playing tackle football in seventh grade.
Murphy was playing inside linebacker in the third game of his junior year in 2018. He was going down the field to cover a play but, instead of hitting the ball carrier, he collided with his teammate, their helmet going into his right shoulder. Though he did not know it at the time, Murphy had suffered a separated shoulder.
He knew something was wrong, but continued the rest of the game.
“After the game’s over, I literally couldn’t raise my arm at all to take off my [shoulder] pads,” Murphy said. “So I was literally bending over and having my teammate just rip off my pads from the top down.”
Despite barely being able to use his right arm, he was determined not to miss anytime with the injury.
The following weeks were a cycle of taking over-the-counter pain pills like Aleve to help him get through. Murphy said he didn’t originally tell his father about the injury, though looking back, he knows he knew.
It got to the point where Murphy was taken out of a game for missing a wide-open tackle. He was essentially playing a fast-paced, violent sport with one arm.
Burbank’s two biggest games of the season were coming up — one was their senior night, the other a rivalry game. The Bulldogs had a chance to win their division in back-to-back years.
In Murphy’s heart and mind, there was a lot on the line, for his team, and for him personally.
“My whole family went to Burbank High,” Murphy said. “My brother played football there. My dad didn't, but he went, my whole family went there. So it was kind of just like, it's my turn.”
Moving forward
Miele underwent surgery to fuse his C3 and C4 Vertebrae in the back of his neck together, but he did not let the injury slow him down. He was up and walking 24 hours after surgery.
“I told my mom I’m getting up, this will not keep me bedridden, I refuse. And it was just one thing that I’ve kept with me,” Miele said.
For two months, Miele had to wear a neck brace at all times, but when his surgeon asked if he wanted to go to physical therapy he said he thought it would be a waste of time.
A month after surgery, Miele was fully cleared to get back in the gym. Even so, he was not able to fully return to the sport he loved for his senior season.
“My surgeon would’ve had to give me clearance and there would’ve been too much liability on him,” Miele said. “I tried just about everything I could to get him to clear me, and I’m like ‘Is there any way I can sign your liability away and put it on me? I’m 18, it doesn’t matter.’ And nothing ever materialized.”
Just like that, his high school wrestling career came to an end.
Miele did not tell his teammates at first that he would be unable to return. When he eventually had to break the news, they resented him for some time, not knowing the true severity of his injury.
Throughout his senior year, Miele struggled not being able to compete with his wrestling family. His mother asked him if he wanted to see a sports psychiatrist. At first, he remembered that he was not interested. He kept his thoughts to himself.
“Ultimately, the worst part is my mental health was really bad,” Miele said. “I couldn’t fathom it. I didn’t want it to be true. And there was definitely times, suicidal thoughts, all that kind of stuff was there.”
Miele paused, pulled out his iPhone and opened the notes app to a page filled with a jumble of thoughts and feelings.
“Eventually I got to the point where I had to write down everything that I was feeling,” Miele said, scrolling down the page.
After some time, he opened up to Allen, who supported and comforted him as he learned more about the situation.
At the end of our conversation, Miele mentioned that the more he has opened up about this point in his life over the past few years, the easier it has become for him to talk about it.
“Welcome back to The Double Double”
Today, Murphy and Miele are for the most part, not limited by their sports injuries. During our conversation on March 31, Murphy raised his arm up past his shoulder. He is mostly able to do so now, but said he feels a bit of a stabbing pain. He also struggles to be able to throw a ball.
What Miele is concerned about, however, is mental, not physical. By his count, he said that he has had 11 concussions throughout his time playing sports. This concerns him when he thinks about his future.
“It really can weigh on you, and that’s kind of what I’m worried about, that it’s going to deteriorate me faster than it should,” Miele said.
Though both were not able to play sports in college, the two have found a way to stay close — journalism.
Call it fate or pure coincidence, the two found their way to NAU’s sports media program. Together, they bring their perspective as former athletes to “The Double Double,” a sports talk radio show the two co-host on KJACK, NAU’s student-run radio station.
“Before sports media, I wanted to be like, I was a marketing major, and I had the idea, I wanted to be a marketer for a sports team or something like that,” Murphy said. “And then I just found sports media and I said, ‘I like this a lot better than marketing,’ so I ran with it.”
Murphy laughed.
“I love talking about sports, and that’s what it is.”
By pursuing careers in sports media, the two can stay close to the sports world in a different way.