Outside the Lines

When an errant pass struck her in the head during a drill at GW lacrosse practice in February 2017, Jasmine Walker dropped to the ground and cried. The tears, she remembers now, came not so much from the pain but thoughts of what might happen next.

Then a first-year, the defender had already suffered three previous diagnosed concussions. Lying on the turf a few days after making her collegiate debut, she knew another head injury could be disastrous to her future in the sport.

"I was scared," Walker said. "I'd just gotten here. I knew I didn't want to give up the sport. I'd put so much work into it."

Nearly two years later, Walker has found perspective on life after lacrosse, but it wasn't an easy journey.

After a months-long recovery from the concussion that ultimately ended her playing career, Walker is using her experience to help others dealing with similar issues.

The junior spearheaded efforts to start a support group for injured student-athletes called Outside the Lines, a partnership between GW Athletics, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) in the Colonial Health Center and the Department of Psychology.

The first Outside the Lines meeting was held last month at the Charles E. Smith Center with a dozen participants representing a variety of sports reviewing strategies for sustaining mental health on the road to recovery.

The discussion, led by student interns from GW CAPS, was titled "Recovering Like an MVP" with the acronym representing Motivation, Validation and Performance. After a successful start, there are plans in the works for several more gatherings in the spring.

"Jasmine's put a lot of effort into this," said Dr. Amber Cargill, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in sport psychology who serves as an assistant director of GW CAPS. "She's taken our feedback and run with it, so it's been a pleasure working with her. I'm glad she made the push to make sure this happened."

It's a cause important to Walker, who remains active in the athletic department as a biology tutor in the Carbonell Center. She hopes her story illustrating the challenges of recovery and the importance of talking about mental health can make an impact with other student-athletes on the mend.

"I'm here for a reason," Walker said. "If I can't do it on the field, I'm going to do something off the field."

Walker carved her path to GW lacrosse with a storybook rise in the sport.

The daughter of former NFL quarterback Jay Walker, she was a Junior Olympian on the track before turning to lacrosse as an eighth grader at St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School in Alexandria, Va. Despite the late start, she quickly emerged as a college prospect in one of the nation's most distinguished prep programs.

"I think it was good that I hadn't been playing for that long," Jasmine Walker said. "Coming into college, it was still something fresh to me. It was something I was excited about."

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Unfortunately, injuries altered Walker's plan. She said she sustained her first concussion as a sophomore in high school playing volleyball. Her second came in lacrosse attempting to draw a charge the next year. As a senior, she suffered another one after being hit by an opponent's shot.

Each time, Walker bounced back quickly and returned to action within a few weeks. She hoped that would be the case when she went down in practice in early 2017 just a few days after recording a draw control in her collegiate debut against UMBC.

This one was different, though. The fog that clouded Walker's mind simply wouldn't lift.

The post-concussion symptoms, including headaches and sensitivity to light and sound, made concentrating on school work difficult and kept her from doing any sort of exercise. Some days, she just wanted to sit in a dark room and do nothing.

"Two weeks turned into four weeks," Walker said. "And then four weeks turned into two months. And then two months turned into six months."

As the symptoms persisted, Walker realized her playing career was in serious jeopardy.

A neurologist offered a recommendation of retirement in November 2017. It was three more months before the headaches stopped, and she finally started to feel like herself again.

Walker's 11-month recovery forced her to confront her mental health. She said she'd met one-on-one with a sport psychologist early on but didn't feel like that was the right form of therapy for her. She leaned on friends and family to talk through the next step.

"It was like one of my core identities was taken away from me," Walker said. "So it was like 'How do you recover from that?'"

Although she's no longer competing in Buff and Blue, Walker has remained a part of the GW Athletics family. In addition to her work as a tutor, she's an enthusiastic fan of the Colonials supporting some of her best friends as she continues to work toward her degree in Finance with a minor in Chemistry with an eye on medical school after that.

"I still say I'm an athlete," Walker said. "Some people may disagree with that, but this was a big part of me. With the way that I conduct my lifestyle and what the expectations are of the athletic department and how I'm contributing to it, I think that's still a very big part of my identity."

Walker's efforts to form the Outside the Lines group was a natural extension of that mindset. She worked with officials across campus throughout last spring and into the summer to get the pieces in place, using a similar program at Stanford as a model.

GW has had peer support groups in the past, but they can be difficult to organize with more than 500 student-athletes across 27 teams in the department.

This effort seemed a perfect fit with the department's increased emphasis on mental health, which has included programming and regular emails on important topics like depression and suicide prevention from Associate Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Health, Well-Being and Performance Chris Hennelly.

"We're trying to remove the stigma," Hennelly said. "We're trying to show that it's important to deal with mental health issues the same way that you deal with the physical."

Cargill was happy to get involved, putting the resources in place to facilitate important conversations.

"There's a lot of psychological distress, obviously, that happens when an injury occurs," Cargill said. "Oftentimes, athletes suffer in silence, and they just do what they're told by their medical doctors and don't attend to the mental health impact that an injury is having.

"There's isolation, fears about returning, fears about it happening again, to name a few. They don't necessarily seek support to address all of those concerns. They're just primarily focused on getting back on the field. A space where talking about what it feels like to be in a situation where you are unable to do what your body has always known and been able to do is helpful to alleviate some of that distress."

Alexis Williams knows those feelings well. The sophomore from women's soccer is rehabilitating after knee surgery to repair a torn ACL suffered during the fall season. She said the group's value was apparent right away during an open and honest conversation.

"It's not something that people like to talk about," Williams said. "When you go through an injury, it's easy to feel like you're alone, especially in college when you're away from your family and friends back home. Being able to find a group like this makes it less scary when you're going through such a long recovery process."

Walker was grateful to be a part of it. She's learned a lot about herself as she adapts to life after lacrosse, and she's still eager to discover more.

When the discussion stalled early in the meeting, Walker tried to speak up. By the end, almost everyone in the room had shared, she said.

"I know for me, despite having already been through my recovery process, I still learned a lot," Walker said. "It makes me feel better about myself and where I am now. Hopefully for other people, it can make them feel more comfortable with their recovery process, too."

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