WOODBURY — Kids here at Nonnewaug are very active with work, sports, or doing something dumb. There has been a significant amount of injuries this year. Concussions are one of the most common.

Junior Noah Blood crashed his dirt bike into an abandoned car in the woods, causing a head injury.

“A concussion is a very bad injury,” Blood said. “When I had a concussion, it caused a little depression because I had a really bad headache. It was annoying and I couldn’t do anything. I just felt stuck.”

Concussions affect students by creating difficulties in learning and attention span.

“After that, I felt like I was in a fog,” said Blood. “I left school a couple times that week because of the headaches.”

I can relate. I have had three diagnosed concussions: twice from getting hit in the head by a player in hockey, and once sledding into a tree.

Everything was blurry when I had mine. After I hit the tree, I started throwing. My most recent concussion from hockey was last year, and I was having a hard time in school for the next month or two.

“I couldn’t do much for a couple days and had a big headache. At least I didn’t have to do schoolwork,” said Blood. “Even though not doing schoolwork is easy and light work, it still is terrible because it’s hard to think, and you just want to feel normal.”

The brain plays a very important role in your body, as it literally controls you, your actions, and how you go through each day.

Some head injuries get so bad that they cause terminal brain injuries.

“It’s a brain injury, right, and it can change the way the brain works normally,” Nonnewaug nurse Sandy Snabaitis said. “There’s all different symptoms and signs of concussions, but there’s also grades of compressions.”

Snabaitis said it’s important to not return to sports until the brain is healed.

Junior Matt Penrosa talked about how his older brother, Nick, had a very severe concussion from taking a hit to the head in hockey.

“He was forced to sit out from hockey for four months,” said Penrosa. “He got very sad, and it impacted his mental health tremendously in the long term.”

Recovery can take about a week or it can last a lifetime, depending on the severity of the concussion.

“It took him like four months until he got back fully recovered doing all activities in school,” said Penrosa.

Concussions aren’t just a painful injury; they can mess you up for a week or forever. There have been a lot of professional athletes who have had career-ending injuries from a hit to the head. Marc Sarvard, a former Bruins player, suffered a hit to the head, which caused a career-ending injury. He talks about how he has headaches every single day and suffers from a lot of bad problems that affect his entire lifestyle.

The time your brain takes to recover is a big factor. It could take days, weeks, months, or years to heal, or it just may never heal properly again.

I have had a handful of pretty bad concussions. I suffer from headaches in school a lot. Make sure to take care of your brain.

This is the opinion of Matt Molleur, a junior reporter for the Chief Advocate and a two-sport athlete at Nonnewaug.