Shane Tamura walked into the NFL Headquarters in Midtown Manhattan and killed four people before taking his own life on July 18, 2025. Tamura begged to be checked for CTE in notes found at the crime scene and blamed his high school football career for his various mental health issues.
CTE stands for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated brain injury- usually resulting from contact sports. Common symptoms of CTE include memory loss, confusion, difficulty concentrating, and in severe cases, like Tamura’s, impaired judgment and erratic behavior.
This incident, along with many others in recent decades, have raised concerns about brain injuries as a result of contact sports.
With Creek being the best athletic school in the country, these risks are prevalent among many of the athletes here, not solely limited to football.
The on-campus trainers at Creek see around 1-2 concussions per week and sometimes have slight concerns about athletes reporting their symptoms correctly and taking the proper amount of time off to heal. Athletic trainer Cristina Nevarro said that one of the most difficult parts of treating a head injury is the subjectivity of them.
“Someone has to tell you how they’re feeling as opposed to some other injuries [where] there are some signs that we can see for sure,” Nevarro said. “ So that makes it a little complicated.”
Motivated by these concerns, the trainers have been working in partnership with their employers, UC Health, to make sure that there are enough resources for student athletes to stay safe while playing contact sports.
One of the main aims of the technology being implemented by UC Health is to put quantitative data behind head injuries instead of just relying on what an athlete is saying. For this, they have started using sway testing, an FDA-approved concussion assessment technology for all heavy contact sports. This testing is able to record an athlete’s baseline data versus their data after a concussion.
“Every single season before the season gets started, we’ll test out every athlete,” Nevarro said. “It can get time-consuming but we’re checking scores like balance, reaction time, memory, impulse control, and inspection time.”
Even though some athletes aren’t directly concerned about head injuries, they still recognize how the trainers work to prevent and treat them.
“Creek has amazing trainers and facilities and ways to prevent getting head injuries,” sophomore offensive lineman Ashton Noyes (#72) said.
Other players agree with Noyes, commending the trainers for having resources to prevent head injuries on and off the field, even if it’s a simple innovation like Guardian Caps, padded covers placed around a football helmet to reduce injury, and prevent head trauma.
“Even though I don’t use them, the guardian caps have been really helpful for my teammates,” junior kicker Ryan Dattillo (#66) said.
These steps have been helpful at school, but Nevarro recognizes how far they still have to go to make sure everyone is safe while playing contact sports.
“The only way we’re ever gonna stop head injuries is if we get very, very aware,” Nevarro said.
