Hipsz hits back at ‘crap’ culture
Ex-Lions lineman doesn’t want CFL’s next generation to struggle with head injuries
During the course of his six-year Canadian Football League career, defensive lineman Tom Hipsz underwent eight surgeries. He suffered a torn bicep, blew out his shoulder twice and was finally forced to retire before the 2002 season when he ruptured an Achilles tendon.
“In the morning, it takes a little while to get the body going. I can’t play pickup basketball, my body wouldn’t co-operate,” said Hipsz, 45, who spent three seasons with the Alouettes during the late 1990s after being drafted by the team in 1996.
He was then traded to the B.C. Lions and also spent time with the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats before leaving the game.
But Hipsz, a student athletic adviser at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont., has bigger fears than the aches and pains that greet him every morning.
Like many former professional football players, Hipsz believes he suffered at least two concussions while playing with the Als that may not have been properly diagnosed.
Hipsz has degrees in history and sociology. Upon his retirement, he returned to school, getting a masters in education. He’s cognizant of the issue of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) — a neurodegenerative disease found in athletes, mainly football players, who donated their brains for research.
Doctors, with great regularity, are discovering concussive and sub-concussive impact from repeated collisions have been linked to brain trauma, including CTE. In July, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a report stating CTE was diagnosed in 177 former football players or nearly 90 per cent of brains studied.
“When you’re reading this stuff, it scares the living daylights out of you,” said Hipsz, who has a sixyear-old daughter. “There’s an element of forgetfulness (he experiences) sometimes. That’s a fear. And then you just wonder is it the absent-minded professor thing or is it too many blows to the head? That’s a fear. Overall, my quality of life is good, but there’s always the concern in the back of your head ... what’s going on in there?”
Hipsz recalls two games in particular while playing for the Als.
Montreal met Hamilton in 1999. Jason Van Geel, a Tiger-Cats linebacker, had a specific technique on punt returns, Hipsz explained. Van Geel would loop around and blindside a player with a blow to the head. Hipsz believed he was concussed on one such play. On the sideline, a doctor held up his fingers to Hipsz.
“In retrospect, looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t say I saw double the amount of fingers,” Hipsz remembered. He returned to the game, only to sustain another serious blow, at which point he advised personnel he wouldn’t return.
Hipsz believes he also was concussed that same season during a home game, but can’t remember the opponent. The Als’ next game was in Calgary, he remembered, and there were conflicting medical opinions. One doctor didn’t want him to play, while another stated he could. Hipsz decided against dressing against the Stampeders, although he practised without pads in the days leading up to the game.
Hipsz bears no grudge against the Als, the team’s medical staff or the CFL. And he’s not seeking any financial compensation. Rather, he decided to contact Postmedia in an attempt to change the culture and alert the thousands of players who have followed.
“I was fighting tooth and nail with the organization over whether it was a concussion in the first place,” he said. “That was the kind of stuff that was going on. They were making us play when we were banged up. I don’t want the next generation (of players) to go through the same crap.
“I’m happy to put my name to it. I believe there’s pressure put on the doctors by their teams. Teams want to win, but they also want to maximize what they’re getting from their investment.”
An email request for comment from a member of the Als’ medical staff wasn’t answered.
While there was no known concussion protocol in the CFL at that time, the league and its players’ association announced a number of health and safety initiatives before the 2016 season, including the implementation of an injury spotter who will monitor every game. Last season, the league also announced any player could get a second opinion from an independent physician with concussion expertise when the player had been diagnosed with a concussion or related symptoms.
And last month, CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie announced the league was eliminating full-contact padded practices during the season, although he denied the new policies were being implemented specifically to reduce concussions.