During her son’s first year of soccer, Nicci Wollam remembers her 3-year-old running around the field, arms extended, pretending to be an airplane.
Fifteen years later, Blake Wollam is no less joyous when he steps on the field for the Columbia River High School soccer team.
After 3 1/2 years away from the game, Blake is back.
He’s back despite having his soccer career and life in general derailed by debilitating headaches that followed multiple concussions.
He’s back, his family believes, thanks in part to an unconventional surgery they sought out after standard treatment did not lead to improvement.
But mostly Blake is back to reclaim a life that seemed like a dream during weeks when he could barely get out of bed.
“Being able to come back out here and play again is taking back something that was taken away,” he said.
‘I just thought I was sick’
Soccer was life for a pre-teen Wollam. He practiced every day. He did private training. He played with other promising young players on the Vancouver-based Washington Timbers.
During one practice in his eighth-grade year, Wollam leapt to knock a pass into the goal, thrusting his head into the ball with his neck. He remembers feeling dizzy afterward.
In the following days, he remembers feeling not quite right. But, as young athletes sometimes do, he quietly tried to tough it out.
“I kept up my normal routine,” Wollam said. “I just thought I was sick.”
Wollam shrugged off the occasional bouts of dizziness and low energy. But three weeks later, he hit his head again.
“That’s when things started to get pretty poor,” he said.
Wollam saw a doctor, who said a few days of bed rest would get rid of the headaches and dizziness.
Instead, the headaches became nearly constant. Wollam had trouble looking at lights. He would forget what he had just said. In class, he would lose sense of time.
“That’s when the questions arose like ‘will I ever get better?'” he said.
Wollam missed a couple weeks of school near the end of his eighth grade year. After a low-key summer, he began to feel better. By August, he was symptom free.
Wollam was cleared by a doctor to resume physical activity, including soccer. Three games into the fall club season of his freshman year, Wollam leapt to try and head the ball into the goal. The goalkeeper tried to punch the ball away, but slugged Wollam in the head instead.
That punch knocked Wollam’s recovery back to square one.
The lowest point
There were plenty of dark moments in the three years that followed.
The worst, Wollam said, came his freshman year at King’s Way Christian High School. He was taking a special class with four other students who were also suffering from post-concussion symptoms.
“It seemed like I was the only one who wasn’t improving,” he said. “Everyone else is getting better and symptom free. I’m still stuck trying to read for five minutes without taking a break because of my headaches.”
Wollam eventually left King’s Way. He began attending Columbia River for one class a day, but was mostly home-schooled.
Much of that time at home was spent sleeping.
“That was the only thing that would help me get through to the next day,” he said.
As hard as life became for Blake, it was just as tough on his parents, Nicci and Terry.
“Your first thought was ‘when is he going to play soccer again?’ ” Terry Wollam said. “That became ‘when is he not going to have headaches? Will this permanently affect him?'”
As conventional treatment of rest and medication failed to change Blake’s condition, frustration and anxiety began to mount.
“There’s a part of you that gets a little desperate,” Nicci Wollam said.
Unconventional hope
At the beginning of Blake’s junior year, his parents came across a magazine article about a young female lacrosse player who too was plagued by post-concussion headaches. She found relief in a surgical operation on the nerves outside skull.
The Wollams were intrigued. Besides, what did they have to lose?
They learned former United States national team goalkeeper Briana Scurry had a three-year battle with headaches and depression after a career-ending concussion in 2010.
Scurry found relief in “occipital nerve release surgery,” a procedure used on patients suffering from migraines and chronic headaches. The occipital nerve runs up from the spine and fans across the back of the head through muscles that can pinch it and cause pain.
Though the surgery worked for Scurry, it still is considered an unconventional treatment for post-concussion symptoms.
Michael Collins, the executive director of the Sports Medicine Concussion Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told the Washington Post that doctors and insurers consider it a last-ditch effort. That’s partly because post-concussion effects can vary widely.
The Wollams were referred to Dr. Ziv Peled, a San Francisco-based surgeon who specializes in peripheral nerve surgery and plastic surgery. In September 2015, Blake traveled to the Bay Area for the operation.
While Wollam’s concussions had caused some brain trauma, he also suffered post whiplash scarring. Dr. Peled cleaned out the scar tissue that was pinching the nerves on the outside of Wollam’s skull.
The nerves remained inflamed. The recovery process was long. But slowly, Wollam’s headaches became less frequent and severe.
One year after the surgery, Wollam’s headaches were largely gone. By December, he was starting to think about playing soccer again, starting with the spring high school season.
His parents were understandably worried. Yet Wollam kept persisting, reminding his folks that he still loved the game.
“Some people thought we were completely nuts,” Nicci Wollam said. “But as people of faith, we felt like this was his call.”
For Nicci and Terry, watching Blake scoring goals or even making the starting lineup was secondary. They had seen their son, now a senior, miss out on so much of what a normal high school student takes for granted.
“In a way, it’s his only high school experience that he’ll get to have,” Terry Wollam said. “Camaraderie with teammates; representing his school. Those are the things I’m excited he gets to have.”
The older new kid
Columbia River soccer coach Filomon Afenegus had never met Wollam until he showed up to the team’s preseason workouts in February.
“I was like ‘who is this kid?'” Afenegus said. “He’s obviously a really good athlete and seems to have a good head on his shoulders. He just kept showing up time and time again.”
When Afenegus learned about Wollam’s concussion issues, he was apprehensive.
“Your number one priority as a coach is making sure your players are safe,” Afenegus said. “He had been through some heavy stuff. Naturally, I was a little concerned for him.”
Wollam was cleared by a doctor to play for Columbia River. Afenegus said concussion awareness in high school soccer has come a long way from years past, when players stayed on the field after “getting their bell rung.” A trainer is at each game and players must pass tests before returning to play if a concussion is suspected.
With Wollam, Afenegus is coaching a player who is under strict orders to never hit the ball with his head.
“It’s pretty frustrating not being able to head the ball,” Wollam said. “I’ve just been stuck trying to chest it. Sometimes you just have to take yourself out of situations where that happens.”
In seeing his new teammate glide around defenders with the ball seemingly stuck to his feet, senior captain Alfonso DeLaPaz couldn’t believe Wollam hadn’t played in so long.
“I would have guessed he had been here all four years,” DeLaPaz said. “He brings us together. He’s so positive.”
For DeLaPaz and his teammates, running an extra drill in the rain suddenly didn’t seem so bad after they learned what Wollam had been through.
“I always think about how I could have been in Blake’s shoes,” DeLaPaz said. “I know he’s grateful to be playing now. I should be even more grateful that I haven’t had any injuries.”
River rolled to the 2A Greater St. Helens League championship with an 11-1 record. The Chieftains (15-1-1) can clinch a state playoff berth with a win over R.A. Long on Tuesday in the district tournament semifinals.
Wollam has even scored two goals — One in a 7-0 win over R.A. Long on April 18, the other in Saturday’s 8-0 district tournament win over Centralia.
One time, Wollam might have judged success by how many goals he had scored. Not anymore.
“It has definitely redefined what I find important in life,’ he said. “Success for me is having a solid group of people around you that you can rely on.”
