Snowboarder turns attention from Olympics to brain injury
Kelsey Boyer founded the nonprofit after suffering a brain injury.
A former Berks County professional snowboarder who suffered a series of concussions in competition has become an advocate for treatment of traumatic brain injury.
Kelsey Boyer has founded Save A Brain, a Utah-based nonprofit dedicated to funding treatment of brain injuries incurred by action sports athletes.
“Slamming heads is second nature to professional athletes,” Boyer said. “They often don’t think of the long-term effects.”
Boyer, 27, who grew up in Rockland Township, lives in Salt Lake City.
Home for the holidays with her father, Jeffrey Boyer, she discussed how her own experience has inspired her to help others confronting the long-term debilitating effects of brain injury.
“My recovery was very, very difficult,” she confided. “Everyone’s lives around me kept moving in motion, while mine seemed so still and stagnant.”
Brain trauma
In 2016, when she walked into an emergency room in Frisco, Colo., then nationally ranked snowboarder Boyer was unprepared for what happened next.
Doctors found a subdural hematoma, apparently the result of concussions sustained in snowboarding competition.
“My brain had been bleeding for about two weeks,” said Boyer. “I had no idea.”
Boyer was rushed to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colo., for emergency surgery to drain the fluid that had shifted her brain, as she recalls, 11 millimeters.
“Her doctors told her anyone else would have been dead or in a coma,” recalls her father, 62, who works at East Penn Manufacturing in Lyons. “They said she must have had a guardian angel.”
While the operation was successful, what followed was a three-year struggle with complications from a traumatic brain injury.
For one thing, she was told her days of competitive snowboarding were over.
Then, there were the headaches, vision problems and emotional outbursts.
“I felt like I was in a deep hole,” Boyer recalls, “and needed somebody to pull me out.”
That somebody turned out to be Cognitive FX, a post concussion treatment center, in Provo, Utah.
In April, she spent a week of intensive cognitive therapy at the facility, whose clients are professional athletes.
Olympic hopeful
Intent on representing America in the Olympics, Boyer headed for the slopes as an amateur right after graduating from Brandywine Heights High School in 2011.
She’d cut her snowboarding teeth on the slopes at Bear Creek Mountain Ski Resort in Longswamp Township.
“I’d pick her up after school and take her to Bear Creek,” Jeff Boyer recalled. “In three years, she missed only three days on the slope.”
Boyer competed in the U.S. Revolution Tour, a series of events consisting of halfpipe, slopestyle, snowboard cross and big air designed as a stepping stone to the elite level of the sport.
By 2016, Boyer was ranked among the top snowboarders in the U.S., and competed in the FIS Snowboard World Cup series. Her signature maneuver was a 540, an aerial move in which the snowboarder rotates 540 degrees, or 1½ spins.
Sidelined from competition by injuries, Boyer now snowboards on a limited basis. She’s coaching at a snowboarding camp for women, and represents K2 Snowboards in Seattle.
Treatment for brain trauma is available, she says, but it’s expensive. Her week at Cognitive FX cost around $10,000, which was funded by grants.
Save A Brain, her nonprofit, will secure grants from corporations and foundations, Boyer said. Her plan is to distribute the funds to athletes who cannot afford treatment for brain injuries.
A website is still in development, but information can be found on Instagram.
“We’re only given one brain,” Boyer said, “why not take care of it.”