Photography courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Jarrett Campbell
Taylor Twellman is returning to his hometown Friday as the featured speaker at the presentation of the Missouri Athletic Club's Hermann Trophy to the best male and female collegiate soccer players in the country.
If things had gone as expected, this event might have occurred at the end of another season for Twellman in Major League Soccer.
“It’s weird,” says Twellman. “I didn’t expect to end my playing career at 28.”
Twellman, a five-time Major League Soccer all-star, suffered what was estimated to be his fifth concussion when he collided with Los Angeles goalkeeper Steve Cronin in 2008, while scoring one of his last of 101 goals.
He never fully recovered from that collision and officially retired from the New England Revolution two years later.
Twellman went on to become a television soccer analyst and is working with ESPN as part of the coverage of this year’s World Cup in Brazil. Because of his soccer background and his personal health history, he is also the point man for ThinkTaylor.org, a nonprofit national campaign to raise awareness about traumatic brain injuries and their relation to sports.
Even five years after the injury, he has lingering effects from his head injuries. He has not done any soccer training for two years and is unable to watch a movie in a theater. The non-profit that he heads promotes the acronym CARE for “Concussion Awareness Recognition and Education. Twellman sees the need for all of those approaches, particularly in light of comments following a recent report that children and teens who suffer a concussion should be kept away from video games and homework while they recover.
“You have someone like Rush Limbaugh on the radio saying high-school athletes will be using concussions as an excuse to get out of homework. That’s just an uneducated view,” Twellman says. Doctors recommend youth who have concussion symptoms to avoid video games and mental tasks that could be difficult during recovery.
Twellman stresses that more research needs to be done, but certain things are clear. One is that you don’t have to be playing American football to get a concussion. Many soccer concussions come from head-to-head contact, elbows to the head, or a kicked ball in the face. Heading the ball could be a source, though more study is needed.
“You can have just as a severe concussion in gymnastics as in football,” Twellman says. “The number one sport for concussion among girls is soccer.”
Until more is known about the effect of heading the ball has on the brain, Twellman recommends that under-13 youth soccer avoid heading both in practice drills and in games.
Twellman, now age 33, has seen some changes in the game that he played for St. Louis University High School, the University of Maryland, and the New England Revolution in the MLS. Even though times have changed for soccer in America, with some players going pro upon high-school graduation, the Hermann Trophy remains the most prominent award nationally for college soccer players.
“The Hermann Trophy for collegiate soccer is the equivalent of the Heisman Trophy for collegiate football,” he says. “That was certainly true before, and it’s still true, even though soccer has changed and some of your best players don’t play collegiate soccer.”
This year, the men’s finalists for the award are Patrick Mullins of Maryland, Harrison Shipp of Notre Dame, and Leo Stolz of UCLA. Mullins won the award last year. For collegiate women’s soccer, the finalists are Crystal Dunn of North Carolina, Morgan Brian of Virginia, and Abby Dahlkemper of UCLA. The awards will be presented at the Missouri Athletic Club downtown on Friday at 8 p.m.
Twellman knows that soccer talk is heating up with the impending once-every-four-years World Cup, being hosted this summer in Brazil. In the initial group stage involving three games, the U.S. team has a tough schedule, playing Ghana, Portugal, and Germany.
“Some say the U.S. is in the ‘group of death.’ If it’s not, it’s the group of death 1-A. The group with the Netherlands, Spain, and Chile might be 1-B. It just means every game is a difficult game. The first game against Ghana [June 16] is a must-win.”
Twellman says his employer, ESPN, is glad that the games will be on during prime time in the U.S., though travel for teams and announcers might be an issue. One game, against Portugal on June 22, will be played at the Arena Amazonia in Manaus, Brazil. That’s 2,700 miles by road from Rio de Janeiro. He says the surrounding rainforest will make it extremely hot and humid.
One plus for the U.S. team this year is its head coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, a former player for Germany, where he was on the German team that won a World Cup and then later coached the German team to the semi-finals.
“When he speaks, he speaks with confidence, and that’s very contagious,” says Twellman. “When he speaks publicly about a player or the team, that confidence is contagious.”
The U.S. team can do well in the World Cup, despite the difficult competition, he says. “The team has more options,” he says. “It’s a product of evolution, 19 years of the MLS. Are they more skilled? I just think they have more scoring options now.”
No one from St. Louis who's as high up the soccer hierarchy as Twellman can escape a conversation without the MLS expansion question as it relates to St. Louis. The Kansas City team, Sporting KC, won the MLS title this year, and the team in another mid-sized market, Portland, is doing well. St. Louis is still waiting for a team.
“Everyone knows St. Louis is a soccer city,” Twellman says. “What is needed is a soccer-specific stadium, preferably downtown, and someone with real money willing to spend it on a team. Otherwise, it ain’t happening, and that’s unfortunate.”
