Football career cut short by multiple concussions

Injuries are to sports as homework is to high school — inevitable. Athletes know to anticipate a few bumps and bruises throughout their respective seasons. However, none of them expect suffering an injury that destroys any chance of playing for the rest of their lives.

Wenatchee’s victory at the home football game against Eisenhower on Sept. 18 wasn’t a cause for celebration for every player on the team.

“I suffered my seventh concussion, ending my football career,” wide receiver and defensive back senior Tanner Seims said. “It’s rough knowing the one thing I’ve always done, I won’t be able to do anymore.”

Seims took his first blow to the head in the second quarter of the game. “I couldn’t remember who we were playing, what the score was, who had the ball,” Seims said. “I felt lost. We were still on offense and I didn’t want to come out, which wasn’t smart on my part.There was a loud ringing — I remember that.”

Enduring textbook signs of a concussion, Seims played on. When later asked the reason for doing so, Seims said, “It was too early in the season for me to get injured and all four years I’ve been injured. With two concussions last year, I didn’t want to believe I had a concussion, so I continued to play.”

During the third quarter, Seims was hit for a second time and decided to tell sports medicine instructor Dale Blair. After being pulled out of the game and treated, Seims received the news that he was suffering a concussion.

Seims had been told the previous year that if he had another concussion, he’d never play football again.

“That was it for me,” Seims said. “When Blair told me [I had a concussion], I got pretty emotional because I knew then that it was my last game. It wasn’t how I wanted it to end.”

The early end to Seims’s season marks the 11th and last year of his football career. The Wenatchee Panthers football team will undoubtedly feel his absence.

“Tanner brought a passion to football. He’s a good teammate. Everybody likes Tanner,” head football coach Scott Devereaux said. “Tanner’s a guy that played multiple positions. [He’s a] senior, experienced. It’s definitely a loss.”

Giving up football was ultimately the best path for Seims. Continuing to face the risk of more concussions and their serious — and potentially fatal — consequences wouldn’t have been wise, Devereaux said.

“You only have one brain, you don’t want to damage it,” Devereaux said.

Although Seims has stopped playing, he’s found a way to continue to with football on a different path. Devereaux has started training him to become a coaching assistant.

“Right now I’m basically there to be an assistant for my position group,” Seims said. “I’m helping the young underclassmen know the plays, routes, doing whatever Coach Dev tells me to do. On the weekends, I’m going to be coming in with coaches to study film and then I can point out to players later what they need to do and fix.”

When asked if he was considering coaching as a profession for the future, Seims said, “Definitely. I know too much about this sport and love it too much to just throw it away. So, it’s going to be something I’m looking forward to do.”

Seims will remain a part of the team and his teammates’ lives through coaching.

“So, there’s home family and football family, the way I look at it. I leave my home off the field and when I’m with them, they know what I’ve been through [in my life],” Seims said. “With all that’s happening, I know there’s some players that don’t know what’s happened. When I tell them I’m never going to pad up again, they frown. That’s a pretty s—– feeling. It just crushes me, but I know they have my back and I’m gonna have theirs’ for the rest of the season.”