Injury issues overcome, MCA senior Trevor Demko is back making plays for the Tornadoes

This wasn't the way Trevor Demko's senior season was supposed to play out.

After being named to the Associated Press all-state second team as a junior, and accepting a scholarship to play football at West Virginia University, Demko was supposed to be the unstoppable force that a young Mount Carmel Area team gelled around.

As a junior, he had nine sacks, 70 tackles and recovered two fumbles. With an offseason devoted to getting bigger and stronger, Demko was riding high.

Then everything changed on only the second day of preseason practice for the Red Tornado lineman.

An intense headache, nausea and a mental haze in 90-degree heat hit the 18-year-old out of nowhere.

Precautions were taken, trainers and doctors were consulted, and it seemed to be a good old-fashioned case of dehydration.

"From the second day of doubles, Aug. 18, all these symptoms kind of emerged and were pretty persistent throughout the rest of the week, actually for several weeks," Demko said.

After symptoms didn't immediately go away, other causes were looked at and various tests performed.

An MRI (magnetic resonance imaging test) and a CT scan were done, but not until Demko took a computerized test aimed at measuring the progress of concussions in athletes. A neurologist and specialist in sports medicine were consulted, and it was decided Demko was suffering from the effects of a concussion.

The discovery stunned most involved since there was no loss of consciousness, no devastating hit that rocked his world, but instead a young lifetime full of strapping on a helmet and knocking around with the boys.

"The initial diagnosis was dehydration," Demko said. "Symptoms included vomiting, intense headaches and being out of it. It was just a horrible feeling. I wasn't able to keep any food down, so it was initially thought to be dehydration. And later it was discovered it was a concussion."

Heart and head

Demko missed the Tornaoes' first two games, an opening loss to Selinsgrove and his final Coal Bucket game against Shamokin, while recovering from the initial concussion symptoms. For the senior captain, watching his team play, and in the case of the Selinsgrove game, losing without him, was difficult.

"It was disappointing," Demko said. "I felt like I was letting down my teammates, and I had no control of it. It felt out of my hands."

That led to Demko working hard to get back on the field for the first time in week three against Shikellamy.

But after the game, during which he played almost every offensive and defensive snap, the symptoms reappeared. This time, knowing the consequence for admitting his pain was to be put back on the shelf, Demko suppressed his symptoms. All that next week, he minimized his condition until getting to play in the Warrior Run game, a 57-20 Mount Carmel win. By then the concussion symptoms got even worse.

"Playing in the Shikellamy game took a little getting used to," Demko said. "I didn't feel any symptoms

until post-game, and kind of knew it was starting to come back. However, I ignored the symptoms, played through the rest of the week and then I played in the Warrior Run game the following week when the symptoms became so intense that it was fortunate I was able to come out of the game at the time I did because we were ahead by so much and put in the second string. Then again, that following Monday the symptoms were too strong. I was again disappointed in myself, disappointed in the way things worked out."

Regrouping

There was no more keeping the recurrent symptoms a secret from anyone.

The morning following the Warrior Run game, the headaches returned with such intensity Demko admits it affected his ability to sleep

"I felt pretty crappy after the Warrior Run game," Demko said. "Headaches and the intense symptoms usually only lasted about 45 minutes after contact, but after the game, that headache persisted through Friday night, Saturday and Sunday to the point I was losing sleep. I was very out of it."

He had compounded his problems by coming back too early and not telling anyone when the headaches returned. That mistake wouldn't be made again, as the senior went through continual computer tests on a program called ImPACT, which is specifically designed for the management of sports-related concussion, according to the company's website.

For the test, after a baseline test is done in the offseason for athletes, any athlete suffering a head injury retakes the test which measures attention span, working memory, problem solving and reaction time and compares the results of the two tests. Some of the test modules include matching colors, word discrimination and symbol matching. The test only measures where a concussion sufferer is in the recovery process. For the actual recovery, not much can be done to hasten the process.

"There isn't much they can do except for sitting and resting," Demko said. "That includes cognitive resting where you don't challenge your brain more than it needs to be challenged."

All of that meant no lifting or running, as well as no texting and no video games. The diet of monotony lasted another three weeks for the 18-year-old senior accustomed to always being on the go. Slowly he began running again, being asked repeatedly how he felt each time, and then lifting, again facing the battery of questions, before full contact drills, and finally game action, could begin.

Not only was Demko not allowed to practice because of the possible effects on his already fragile brain, the concussion changed his routine in school and his ability to concentrate consistently during the course of a day.

"School was a challenge, more of a challenge than it usually is," he said. "I had a little extra time with not practicing, and I had to study harder. It was a little hard to remember things, and my memory wasn't as sharp as it usually is. My teachers helped me out. Sometimes they would print out notes, but otherwise I had every test and took everything and was able to maintain an A-average."

Throughout the whole process Trevor's parents, Tom and Peggy, maintained contact with doctors, as well as making sure their son was honestly assessing his own health after jumping the gun the first time.

"He was wishing it would go away and hoping it wasn't real," Peggy said. "It wasn't like he just wasn't being honest, he was just thinking it's a regular headache, I'll take medicine and it'll be fine. He didn't deliberately try to deceive us. He's a kid, he's hoping for the best."

Tom had been with Trevor on trips to football camps in Akron and West Virginia in the summer, and was by his son's side, feeling some of his heartache in not being able to play.

"Sure, it's tough," Tom said. "It was his senior year, we wanted him to do well, and hopefully it was going to be a great season for them as a team with a good nucleus coming back, and it was tough to see him standing on the sidelines. It was killing him, and as parents, both my wife and I. It was killing us not to see him out there. It's not like it's a cast, where you see a cast on a kid and you know in three or four weeks that the cast will be off and he'll be ready to go.

"We were patient and kept encouraging him. And it was well, you can run today, or you can lift weights, but then how did you feel?"

West Virginia was as open with Trevor as he was with them, assuring him that his scholarship was safe.

"I felt the best policy was to be straight up and honest," Trevor said. "They appreciated that, and they encouraged me to do what the doctors suggested: not to rush back into it. They reminded me that the scholarship was secure, and that they wanted me healthy next year. They didn't want be to come down brain damaged," he said with a laugh, "or with any sort of hindrance or persistent injuries."

Returning to form

It was a total of five games the former AP all-state defensive lineman missed. After the Southern Columbia game, Demko was pretty much symptom free. There were aches and pains that he would have been accustomed to through preseason and the first eight games of the year, had he been playing regularly.

"There was a transition back in," Demko said. "I had not done anything for such a long time that coming back in was a transition with soreness and fatigue that I normally wouldn't have felt. That was the hardest thing, but I was eager to get back so I overlooked that. It didn't matter as much."

Demko played every snap of the Red Tornadoes' games against Lewisburg and Southern, which were played only four days apart. In the time he's played, Demko has 20 tackles, but he's hoping the Tornadoes can make the postseason where he can try to regain some of that valuable time on the field as a senior that has slipped away.

"It's pretty rough," Demko said after his team's 31-20 loss to Southern. "You have to regroup and not let your emotions bring you too down. You've got to come back next week no matter what."

That's the wisdom of an 18-year-old who knows how fortunate he is to be back on the field.

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