She never saw it coming. A sophomore fullback on last season’s Pac-Five girls varsity soccer team, Dayna Sur was patrolling the area in front of the Wolfpack goal when a player from the other team took a chance on a hard shot in traffic.
The girl standing between Sur and the kicker wisely got out of the way, leaving Sur vulnerable.
"I didn’t see the ball at all, but it hit the side of my face and I fell," Sur recalls. "I got up because I didn’t want to get stuck in the goal area, but I was dizzy and I couldn’t hear. I tried to walk it off."
Team trainers checked on Sur after the game, but nothing unusual registered on the standard diagnostic tests. Still, something was clearly amiss.
Sur felt unusually energetic immediately after the game. Later, on the ride home, she fell into an equally unusual silence.
As the night wore on, Sur endured a constant headache. She struggled through her homework as every pulse of light and sound exacerbated her discomfort.
Sur was tested again the next day. This time the results clearly indicated a concussion. Sur and her family now had the benefit of a diagnosis, but they still had no idea what was ahead.
As weeks and months passed, Sur’s difficulties continued. She suffered debilitating headaches. She had difficulty processing information. She’d stare at her notebook at class notes she couldn’t even remember taking.
At one point Sur underwent therapy to retrain her eyes to move side to side without her getting dizzy.
Sur’s parents met with administrators at Hawaii Baptist Academy early on to arrange special accommodations, like extra time to take tests. But as her symptoms persisted, it became harder for Sur to continue asking for help. Sometimes she simply suffered through her limitations rather than risk raising questions about why she wasn’t better yet.
AS a soccer player, Sur always preferred the unheralded work of playing defense or assisting on goals rather than scoring goals herself. She loved being a part of a team.
Now, alone in her recovery, Sur dedicated herself to delivering the biggest assist of her young life.
A Girl Scout from the age of 8, Sur took on as her Gold Award project the revitalization of the Kaneohe Civic Center Park soccer field. She worked with city officials to arrange long-overdue groundskeeping work and watered and tended to the field each day.
Once the field was back in top shape, Sur held a soccer clinic for kids ages 6 to 12 that included a special presentation on concussions.
"We pass by that field every day, and she always looks at it," says Sur’s mother, Dawn. "It’s bittersweet for her."
Sur’s doctor assures her that a full recovery is just a matter of time. In the meantime Sur continues to look for opportunities to promote concussion awareness.
"I was angry and frustrated that it happened to me, but eventually I realized that a lot of good things came out of it," Sur says.
