USM Grad Makes an ImPACT
Generous Gift Continues Work of Devoted Alumnus
USM Plays Role In Helping Communities Cope After National Tragedy
A Perfect Fifth: Celebrating the Anniversity of a Successful Partnership

USM Grad Makes an ImPACT

It's the superstars, of course, who get the headlines. Troy Aikman retires from pro football's Dallas Cowboys this summer because he's had too many concussions. That story follows about a year after another player, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young, quit because he suffered four concussions in three years. Great players smart enough to take good advice.

Sure, the stars of professional sports deserve the best of care. But so does the starting halfback or the backup goalie on the girls' soccer team at your local high school. And Micky Collins '91 (B.A., psychology and biology) is helping to deliver that care, to athletes at all levels.

The numbers, forgive the unavoidable pun, make your head spin. Nearly 300,000 sports-related concussions are reported in the United States each year. Among high school athletes each academic year, between 10 and 12 percent suffer a concussion each sports season. And these figures don't include cases where the effects of injury are understated, missed, or misdiagnosed.

The overt symptoms of a concussion seem easy enough to spot: headaches, nausea, possible loss of consciousness, blurred vision, memory loss, trouble concentrating, sensitivity to light.

"But what are the long-term effects of the injury?" says Collins. "When can an athlete return to play safely? How do we define safe?"

Collins, who holds a Ph.D. in neuropsychology from Michigan State University, is a clinician with the renowned sports medicine program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. At Pitt, he works closely with Mark Lovell, Ph.D., the preeminent expert in sports-related brain injuries, and director of concussion treatment programs in the National Hockey League and 28 of 31 National Football League teams, including the hometown Steelers.

Their research has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and other top medical publications, and Collins has discussed their work with ABC News, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and other media outlets.

They are also two of five co-developers of ImPACT, the Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment Cognitive Testing computer program, which is designed to elevate the diagnosis and treatment of sport-related concussions. (See Having ImPACT.)

Thanks largely to Collins's efforts, ImPACT is used by training and medical staff at more than 40 colleges around the nation, including several Big 10 football teams, and the University of Southern Maine and the University of Maine. Here in southern Maine, some 19 colleges, prep schools, and high schools use the program. (See ImPACT.)

Collins works regularly with the Steelers, and he helped evaluate Young. But ask Collins about the program's use in Maine, and you'll detect a subtle hint of satisfaction in his voice. And more than a little pride.

"My real passion is to get (the use of ImPACT) down to the high school athlete," Collins says. "That's where it's needed most."

At Work in Maine

"The question is, how do we know brain function has returned to normal?" Collins says. "We needed a tool that measures recovery more efficiently and cost effectively."

Collins believes the best tool available is his ImPACT program. And he's not alone. At a May 2000 meeting of athletic trainers in Portland, Collins followed a talk on his work with a request. He needed help setting up a pilot program to test high-school players on ImPACT.

Ursula Vollkommer, a trainer with HealthSouth of Portland, leapt at the chance.

"I felt this could be a turning point for the treatment of concussions," says Vollkommer. She works with Bonny Eagle High School in West Buxton and Catherine McAuley in Portland. At Bonny Eagle, she sees on average 18 concussions per year. "It was something we had to try."

Vollkommer soon was convinced her hunch was right. And by August 2001, her colleagues at HealthSouth and Orthopaedic Associates of Portland thought so, too. They bought and distributed ImPACT to 19 colleges, prep schools, and high schools in their southern Maine coverage area.

"No one really took an interest in mild traumatic brain injury," says Dr. William Heinz, a specialist in sports-related musculoskeletal injuries at Orthopaedic Associates. "For the longest time, people were saying, it seemed, we have standards but no one really knows the long-term effects of these injuries. And it seemed it was OK not to really know.

"But Micky and Mark said that's just not acceptable," Heinz says. "They launched into a way to do it better."

Heinz used the program to assess a Kennebunk football player who suffered a concussion early in preseason practice. Without ImPACT to help with his evaluation, Heinz says, the player would have gone back to play in a week. With ImPACT, the player sat out six weeks.

The converse also is true. "ImPACT helps us get kids safely back into competition sooner as well," Vollkommer says. "If an athlete shows no symptoms and tests out OK, there's no reason to hold him or her out any longer."

In either case, Heinz says, "Anything we can do to make it safer for kids to play, we need to do."

USM's head trainer, Matt Gerken, also sees ImPACT as another tool athletic and medical staff use to care for student athletes. In early October, Gerken used the program to evaluate a baseball player injured in fall practice. He also said students majoring in athletic training and sports medicine will have the chance to use the program in their clinical training.

"We're incorporating it into our current standard of care," Gerken says. "Even if the program's effectiveness isn't proven to a 't' yet, it takes some of the guesswork out of evaluations."

"Look at it this way," Heinz says. "The NHL and NFL are on board with this thing. There must be something to it."

Solid Foundation

When he left Hermon for the University of Southern Maine in the fall of 1987, Collins, as he put it, didn't set out to do anything big. He was a good student, and a good athlete.

"But at that point," Collins says. "I was as much of an athlete as I was a student."

He chose USM for a number of reasons. The campus was close to home, but not too close. Though he didn't know what he wanted to study, Collins recognized USM as place to earn a solid liberal arts education. And baseball coach Ed Flaherty wanted Collins on his team.

As a freshman in the 1988 season, Collins was a left-handed designated hitter. Over the next two years, including the Huskies' first appearance in the NCAA Division III College World Series in 1989, he moved to first base, played outfield, and pitched a bit. Baseball was fun, but it wasn't his sole focus.

While living in Wood Hall, he met the men and women who would go on to be his closest friends, including Lynn Cyr '91 (B.A., social work). They married in 1994.

Toward the end of his sophomore year, Collins needed to choose a major. He was taking several biological sciences classes, notably with professors John Broida and Remo Riciputi.

"Broida put me on an intellectual ride that I haven't gotten off," Collins said. "He posed some really interesting questions about brain behavior. He and Riciputi made me think in ways I'd never thought before."

Among the new thoughts: quitting the baseball team. Collins sat out his senior year to concentrate on his studies. He graduated summa cum laude and headed for graduate school in East Lansing, Michigan.

"USM gave me such a strong foundation," Collins says. "The professors there really pulled my potential out of me. A huge part of an undergraduate education is preparation for making good choices. And USM really prepared me to do that."

He was one of just eight students accepted into Michigan State's neuropsychology program that year. "I'd look around the room at other students from Harvard, Michigan, and elsewhere. And I was every bit as prepared as my brethren."

By 1995, Collins was three years into his doctorate, and struggling to find a niche. That struggle ended, oddly enough, while he was watching late-night television. Ted Koppel, host of the ABC news show, "Nightline," was discussing sports-related concussions with Al Michaels, the play-by-play announcer of "Monday Night Football."

"Michaels was saying how little health professionals knew about concussions, how CT scans and MRIs were insensitive to the injury," Collins says. "I stood up and said, 'This is something I can do.' It seemed the perfect mix of my love of sports and this brain stuff I was studying."

At a 1996 conference on sports-related concussions at Pittsburgh, Collins met Lovell, who would go on to become his mentor.

"His enthusiasm is something you notice right away," Lovell says. "Micky's not the run-of-the-mill neuropsychologist. He has a great love of sports, and he works with people in a medical setting. It was a natural niche for him."

With Lovell's encouragement, Collins began baseline testing on college athletes. He started with the Michigan State football team. Then he tested the University of Florida. Then the University of Pittsburgh. Utah called. In 1998, Lovell was serving a fellowship at the Henry Ford Clinic in Detroit. He invited Collins to Detroit for a two-year post-doctoral fellowship. There, their partnership began in earnest.

North by East

Collins and his wife, Lynn, can and do dream about returning to Maine. Someday. But for now, Lynn is in the midst of a graduate social work program at Pittsburgh. And, thanks in part to a five-year, $3 million federal grant, Micky's job is secure at one of the top sports medicine facilities in the country.

"It's a very dynamic place," Collins says. "As Lynn says, I'd be nuts to leave."

So for now, his work is his ambassador home. "With ImPACT, the goal is to elevate the standard of care," Collins says. "I'm really excited about rolling out the technology back in Maine. It's only going to help kids play safely."

-- Gregory Reid

back to top