Concussions too much for Lady Rebels player Major

The elbow caught Diamond Major square. It was as if someone had painted a target on the middle of her forehead and fired a bazooka. It was friendly fire — it was at a Lady Rebels practice a couple of weeks ago.

The former Bishop Gorman and Las Vegas High standout went to the sideline and dropped to all fours.

Remember when Moe would put fellow Stooge Curly's head in the drill press vise and turn the crank? Diamond Major said that's what a concussion feels like. With all the sound effects.

She also can relate to Wile E. Coyote, when an anvil would fall from the sky in those old cartoons.

"The first thing you feel is nauseous," she said about suffering her eighth concussion playing competitive basketball. Or was it the ninth? Or was it more than that?

"You feel super dizzy. I just went off to the side and bent over. I stayed on my knees for a while, until I could stand up."

She knew that when she stood up, her basketball career would be over.

Until two weeks ago, when she took that elbow to the forehead and heard the sound effects, Diamond Major was the Lady Rebels' defensive catalyst. Now she says she'll be the team's biggest cheerleader.

She seems sort of OK with that.

It's better than being a statistic.

Did you see another kid died the other day after taking a blow to the head in a high school football game? This kid was from rural Kansas. In the story, there was a picture of him standing in front of farm equipment. The story said he had scored a touchdown, ran off the field and collapsed.

The week before that, a kid in Chicago took a hit on the last play of the game. He died, too. He still was breathing at the hospital but there was blood on his brain.

Last summer there was blood on Diamond Major's brain. Eventually the clot dissolved on its own. She knows she could have been the kid in Chicago, the kid in Kansas.

"You never know when it is going to happen," she said Wednesday on Lady Rebels media day as workers were stringing up banners of the UNLV players from the Cox Pavilion rafters. Major's picture would be going up though she won't be playing. She said it was nice for the team to honor her like that.

"I'm susceptible to concussions," she said. "Last year, I had two. The doctors said if I got another one, we'd have to weigh the options, whether I was going to continue playing.

"And then it happened again ..."

"It was time to call it quits."

People usually don't associate concussions with women's sports. They associate them with contact sports such as football and boxing and ice hockey. Yes, some women box, and some play hockey. But they have helmets in those sports.

In basketball, they have headbands.

Last year, Major tried playing with one. It was a distraction. Besides, headbands don't afford much protection. Remember Jim McMahon? He wore headbands, and a padded helmet with a big facemask, and he still suffers terribly from concussion-like symptoms.

McMahon liked to run into guys. McMahon did not take a knee. McMahon's offensive linemen thought that was cool.

Now, Jim McMahon doesn't know what day it is.

"I think I'm more susceptible to head injuries because of the kind of player (I was)," Diamond Major said.

She was the kind of player who always was putting her nose in front of somebody's elbow. Even in practice.

"Are you always on the floor, are you diving, are you always in the way of stuff? I think that's what me got me into trouble," she said.

Major appeared in 44 games for the Lady Rebels. She started 10 games as a sophomore. In two seasons, she scored 43 points and pulled down 41 rebounds. She had 20 assists, 11 steals, 3 or 4 knocks on the noggin that caused her head to explode, or so it seemed.

"My last concussion came on defense," she said with a slight smile, because defense was what she was known for.

UNLV coach Kathy Olivier said it was terrible that Major will never play competitive basketball again. "But Diamond always finds the positive things in life, and she's going to still be involved with the program and help us in other ways," Olivier said.

But here's the thing about head cases such as Diamond Major's: Just because you stop playing sports doesn't mean that's the end of it. There's this thing called post-concussion syndrome. Major said you read stories about the lingering effects of knocks on the noggin, about football players and hockey enforcers suffering from depression.

In extreme cases, some commit suicide.

"There are long-term consequences," she said. "You can have nine, 10 and be perfectly fine. Or you can have one and it can be fatal.

"I'm only 20 so ..."

So you quit playing competitive basketball, and you don't seek a second opinion. You count lucky stars. You continue studying to be a pediatrician, or for a career in sports medicine.

You support your teammates from the sidelines.

And if you're Diamond Major, you hope that anvils don't fall out of the sky, like in those old Roadrunner cartoons.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.