Sidelined soccer player finds joy amid the pain

Mark Spiegel’s head is hurting.

It is a relentless pain, like a migraine — the kind of pain that makes you want to reach for prescription bottles, the kind that forces you to crawl back into bed, the kind that keeps you up at night.

For him, the headache never goes away.

But you would never know it.

In a chilly indoor soccer facility on the Southside, 29-year-old Spiegel spots a stray neon soccer ball rolling away from a pack of spirited 8- to 10-year-olds. He runs at it and pounces, sending it swiftly into an unwatched goal.

“Ohhhhhhh!” he cheers himself, spinning around the practice turf with his arms out wide like an airplane.

The goofy coach crouches down to give kid-level high-fives. He gives encouragement for every player, every play: “Boom!” “What a save!” “Yes!”

Soccer is the game that broke him — then brought him back. He can’t play it anymore, but he can’t stay away.

Nearly 10 years ago, a sports injury sidelined Spiegel while he played for Butler University. It inflicted constant headaches and forced him to drop out of school.

In the depths of his depression, a counselor asked him: “What’s good in your life?”

He had choices to make, the counselor told him. And he decided to choose joy.

A crushing blow

It was three days into preseason of Spiegel’s sophomore year at Butler, and things were looking up.

He had sat on the bench the whole year before, redshirted by a groin injury and tortured by watching others play the game he so loved.

But he had undergone surgery, completed his recovery and was playing the best soccer of his life.

He was a center midfielder — the playmaker. He was a promising recruit, a record-breaking high school player and member of one of the best club teams in Kansas City, Mo.

Earlier that day, the coach had named him a starter.

As the team scrimmaged at practice, someone kicked a long ball. Spiegel saw it out of the corner of his eye. He turned.

It smacked him in the back of the head.

The way he describes it now, he makes a fist with one hand and punches it into his other open hand.

“My brain went forward and hit my skull,” he explains.

He didn’t pass out. He kept playing.

But after the scrimmage, he went to the trainer.

“I just am not feeling right,” he told her.

That’s when the headaches started.

“I was told it was just a concussion, and it would die down,” Spiegel said. “Once my headache went away, I could start playing again.

“It just kind of never went away.”

He wasn’t allowed to play for the rest of the year. He wondered what people thought when they looked at him on the bench, seemingly healthy and in shape but hobbled by an invisible injury.

It wasn’t just a problem on the field. He couldn’t concentrate, and he couldn’t remember things he had read.

He approached it like an athlete: Rub some dirt on it. Shake it off. Suck it up. Just work harder. Three hours in the library studying turned into four or five.

“I’d been hit in the head plenty of times — worse, I feel,” he said.

But this time was different.

A growing problem

Sports-related concussions have become a national talking point in recent years, shoved into greater recognition after high-profile incidents in the NFL and amid growing fears for youngsters in increasingly intense sports.

At Indiana University School of Medicine, Dr. Thomas McAllister studies concussions and how different people are affected by seemingly similar injuries.

An estimated 3 million people suffer sports-related concussions every year, he said, though that’s likely an underreported number.

The mild brain injury can leave a person dazed and confused, but studies have shown nine out of 10 elite athletes recover in a week or a little longer.

Five percent to 10 percent of people, though, don’t experience a good recovery.

McAllister pointed to factors that could have worked against Spiegel, such as a previous concussion in high school and other big hits along the way.

Spiegel’s brain scans showed some bruising and swelling, too – another bad sign.

Symptoms commonly associated with concussions – headaches, imbalance, trouble sleeping – can persist.

“The headache can be very difficult to treat,” McAllister said. “We really don’t understand what causes it.”

Another wallop

Spiegel was desperate to get back on the field.

“Eventually,” he said, “— and I hate that athletes are probably still doing this — I lied and said my head feels perfect, I’m all better, I just want to play soccer.”

The deception bought him clearance to play in his first collegiate game. He started and earned a game-winning assist.

“I was on top of the world,” he said, “so I just went with it.”

The team started his junior-year season with three wins at home. About a month into the season, they traveled to face off against Indiana University.

While playing, an elbow clipped Spiegel’s temple.

“I don’t remember much from that game,” he said. “It was fuzzy. The next morning I was asking if we had won. And we’d lost.”

He went to Pittsburgh to see a specialist, who told him he was putting too much stress on his brain – staying up late, studying, playing soccer, traveling to China over the summer.

“I wanted him to tell me, here’s how you fix it. Here’s a pill you take to fix it,” Spiegel said. “And he said, nope, you’re done.”

A diligent student, Spiegel tried to continue going to classes at Butler but would walk out unable to remember what had been discussed.

His roommates would find him sitting on the edge of his bed, holding his head in his hands and sobbing from the pain.

He dropped out of school.

Downward spiral

The kid who didn’t want to miss out on anything in college eventually watched his roommates and friends graduate from Butler without him.

“I went from a D-I athlete involved in probably too many things,” Spiegel said, “to living at home with my mom and dad and little brother, waiting for them to get home from work.”

Under doctor-ordered complete rest, a fog of medicines, dreaded sleeplessness and growing depression, he lost his great ambitions.

He resigned himself to trying to watch every movie ever. His mom took him on “dates” out to dinner, just to get him out of the house.

But he wasn’t always open with his family about what he was going through, his mom said, because he didn’t want them to worry. He didn’t want them to be sad.

“He became a person that scared us,” said his mom, Jean. “His optimism, his love for life just wasn’t there.

Spiegel began to feel like he was holding onto false hope that his headaches would vanish.

“For a long time I went to bed with the hope and the prayer of please, let tomorrow be the day,” he said. “To be let down that often is… it’s so crushing.”

But when the Christian counselor asked him about what was good in his life, it all came pouring out.

Spiegel talked about how close he was with his parents and three brothers. He talked about the neighborhood kids whom he grew up with, playing outside until the streetlights came on.

He talked about joining his pals for shaving their heads in the summers, barbecuing on Sundays, playing wiffle ball in the backyard.

Here’s what the counselor told him:

You don’t have to be happy with your situation, but you can still find joy in it.

“That gave me the freedom to say having a headache for 10 years sucks,” Spiegel said. “I hate it with all my being. Every day is the worst.

“But I have a great life. I laugh more than I do anything else, and that’s because I wake up and I can count blessings. I can find joy in things that I used to take for granted.”

Fighting back

The first step was to start running.

First, he ran on a treadmill at a gym.

Then — ever the goal-setter to the extreme — he tackled marathons.

“It makes my head hurt worse, but my soul feels better,” Spiegel said.

He found joy in coaching youth soccer. He volunteered at a soup kitchen. He worked with Young Life, a youth ministry, which took him to Colorado and Japan to lead outdoor excursions.

His head hurt — worse when he traveled, worse with higher elevations — but life was better when he focused on others.

Choosing joy gave him the strength to finally return to Butler five years after he dropped out.

He went back to become an English teacher. It melded his coaching style and his fascination with people’s stories, fostered by the communities he found in Colorado and beyond.

“He wants to know why about everything,” said Butler professor Shelly Furuness, who became Spiegel’s mentor.

He didn’t miss classes, she said, and didn’t let on about his headaches – even as the pain climbed from its usual 6, on a scale of 10, to a steady 8.

As he wrapped up his degree and started student-teaching, Spiegel began to realize that his headaches demanded flexibility that he wouldn’t get in a traditional teaching job, where he would always need to be “on stage” in the classroom.

He graduated Sunday with a piece of paper that he hurt so bad for and might not be able to use.

Instead of getting a teaching job, he is launching a competition called Charitable Heroes, where people will try to win a chance to donate money every year to a cause of their choice.

Judges oversee three rounds: A video or essay about yourself, questions about a cause you support and an interview.

The entrance fees go toward a trust that lets the winner gain the charitable “superpower” of giving away a percentage of it every year.

“Inspire, educate and empower,” Spiegel said. “We see a broken world, and we want to fix it, but we can’t fix it for everyone. Can we do for one what we want to do for everyone?”

He sets aside his pain to pour himself into giving back in some way — in any way.

“That’s why I volunteer,” he says. “I want to give them what I was given.”

So when he says he wants to help change the world, somehow, coming from him, it sounds like a reachable goal.

Step by step

In a way, coaching soccer seems like everything else Spiegel chooses to do: A defiant stance against the pain that he won’t let define him.

But maybe he gives the kids the little pushes he needs, too: You did it. Now keep going. Just like this. You can do it.

The future is a cruel prospect for a man who lives his life tiny decision by tiny decision.

His days are composed of little incremental goals: I’m gonna get out of bed and take a shower. I’m gonna make it to the next hour. I’m gonna make it through lunch.

His unofficial motto seems to have been both chosen and forced on him: Suck it up.

“Everything is a choice,” he said. “To get out of bed is a huge choice. To smile rather than frown is a huge choice. To hold back tears is a huge choice.”

Whatever it takes to find his joy.

Cathy Knapp contributed to this story. Call Star reporter Stephanie Wang at (317) 444-6184. Follow her on Twitter: @stephaniewang.