Field senior girls soccer standout Haley Hershberger returned to the field this season after missing the last 18 months recovering from a seizure she suffered at the end of her sophomore soccer season.
Tom Nader/Portage Sports

By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

Haley Hershberger’s soccer cleats and ball had found a permanent home in her closet.

Hidden from sight.

For good reason.

Just seeing them was enough to spark painfully hollow emotions, because they were a visual reminder that the game she had loved her entire life, soccer, had been ripped away from her.

For 18 months, they lay dormant in the closet.

Out of sight, but not necessarily out of mind.

It was part of the healing process that was the result of a Grand mal seizure on Sept. 29, 2023.

Hershberger was a sophomore at Field High School and 11 days removed from being diagnosed with a mild concussion that occurred during the team’s 6-3 win over Tallmadge.

The seizure triggered a series of tests that led to her being diagnosed with epilepsy, placed on medication and instructed by her doctors to stop playing soccer in fear that another hit to her head could be harmful to her future health.

“It was very hard for me to accept that soccer was gone from my life. It happened so quickly,” Hershberger said. “Soccer has always been my life. I had played since I was 4 years old, so being told I couldn’t play anymore was something I struggled with. It was hard to accept that it was over. I was depressed. I was short with people. I was irritable.”

Her mother, Kelly, was supportive and available, but watched as her once upbeat daughter’s personality spiraled toward an emotional funk.

“She wasn’t herself at all,” Kelly said. “You could tell how hard it was on her and how she was trying to come to grips with it. She would just lay in her bed all day depressed. She couldn’t even go to the games to watch her team play because it was too hard to just watch, knowing that she couldn’t play. It was like waving a steak in front of a dog.”

For the remainder of Hershberger’s sophomore year, that is the way it was.

In many ways, her junior year was a reflection of the same. While her maturity allowed her to understand more of the situation, it still didn’t mean she had to like it.

In the months leading up to the start of her senior year, with follow-up tests repeatedly returning positive results, Hershberger’s mind began to wonder.

Was there a scenario that soccer could fit back into her life?

It was a thought she kept mostly private to herself — possibly as a safeguard in case the thought was more of an unfair dream than a reality.

Then, on a summer day in July, she found the courage to pull her cleats and ball from her closet.

She literally dusted them off, laced up the cleats and walked into the backyard.

It was an image Kelly was not emotionally prepared to see.

“I was outside mowing the lawn, and I watched her walk outside with her soccer ball, and I saw that she had her cleats on,” she said. “On my riding mower, I just started bawling. She had not touched those things since her seizure almost 2 years before that.”

For the next hour, Kelly cried as she finished mowing the lawn, watching Haley kick her soccer ball against the kick wall her and her husband Shaun had built for their children years ago.

“After a while, she came running up to me and said, ‘(Field girls soccer coach) Jason (Schindler) invited me to come to practice.’

“I didn’t know what the details of what that meant at the time, but I was just still in shock she was outside playing soccer,” Kelly said. “There had been many difficult family discussions in the past about soccer. We would talk about how she may think that right now is the prime of her life, but that she has her entire life in front of her — driving, family, children, work. I never wanted a short-sighted decision to play soccer take all of those things away from her. In that moment, though, when she was talking to me about going to practice, I saw the sparkle in her eyes. That was a sparkle I had not seen in a long, long time. That was my old Haley again. I told her to text her dad, and we would talk about it.”

FRIDAY, SEPT. 29, 2023

All things considered, the day started like any other for Hershberger.

She was still in concussion protocol, but was also 11 days removed from the injury that happened when a throw-in lightly swiped the top of her head.

It was a play that had happened to her many times before.

This time was different, though.

“I remember feeling a little fuzzy, but, honestly, that feeling went away,” Hershberger said. “I think that was maybe because I was so focused on the game.”

By the time the game was over, and most definitely by the time she had gotten to the car to go home with her mom, “she was complaining of a headache.”

The trainer temporarily ruled her out of play the following day after administering a concussion test. It was the third concussion of Hershberger’s career.

On Sept. 29, Hershberger was in her math class, when the teacher turned the lights out so that the class could work on a project on their Chromebooks.

From that point forward, Hershberger said she doesn’t remember anything else other than what her friends and teachers told her.

She stood up, leaned against the wall next to her and slid down slowly as she began seizing.

Two of her friends, Nema McAmis and Morgan Stoicoiu, rushed over to help, while Hershberger’s teacher Mrs. Vitko went into action to get help.

Kelly was employed by the district, working in the high school cafeteria, and uncommonly was scheduled to come in early that day. She was working when administrator Ashley Mauger came rushing over to her to communicate that Haley had collapsed.

“By the time I got into the room, she had stopped seizing, but she was not coherent,” Kelly said. “She did not know where she was or who anyone around her was. I was in complete shock. I knelt down beside her and tried to comfort her, tried to be strong for her while we waited for the ambulance to get to the school. It was all a blur for me.

“She kept looking around like she was blind, like she was trying to see things, but couldn’t,” Kelly said. “I rode with her to the hospital and all she kept saying was, ‘Mom, I’m scared’.”

At the hospital, Hershberger began to regain consciousness, her blood work came back clear and she was being prepared to be released to go home just a couple of hours later.

“I was not happy with that report,” Kelly said. “I told them I want a CT scan, EEG, whatever it took, and that I would pay for all of it. I wanted to know what caused it.”

Those tests were given just a couple days later as part of an already scheduled follow-up appointment for her concussion protocol. A 2-hour EEG provided clarity, providing data that Hershberger had convulsive brain activity, staring seizures and epilepsy.

Suddenly, soccer took a backseat to finding a return to a healthy life.

THE SPACE BETWEEN

Initially, Hershberger’s health recovery plan was focused on the physical and neurological.

“There are a lot of people who have to try different medications before they find one that works for them,” Kelly said. “Haley was lucky. The medication that they started her on stopped her seizures right away.” 

Obviously, Haley and the family were grateful for that development.

But at the same time that she was getting right physically, there was a mental component that was materializing, too.

The loss of soccer removed the largest part of her physical and social life.

“I know it sounds dramatic, but soccer had been her life,” Kelly said. “It had been our life, because her older sister Kylie played, too. Haley was the ball girl for those teams. We did not know anything different than soccer. We did it all year round and now we were all thinking what do we do now.”

Haley didn’t have the answers either.

She tried to stay upbeat, but both immediately and unexpectedly, there was a void in her life.

“I tried to keep my mind busy,” she said. “I tried to find something else I liked, so I started riding horses more regularly. I had started riding when I was in seventh grade, but I made it much more of a focus for me.

“I loved the horses, and I formed a bond with them,” added Hershberger, who also started working around the same time to help fill her time. “My cousin’s horse was at the same barn that I went to so being there with her was really special. It helped me a lot, and I loved it, but it never replaced soccer.”

At the time of Hershberger’s seizure, her Falcons team had just a few weeks remaining to their season. She then also missed her entire 2024 junior soccer season.

“At that time, we were told by her neurologist that they have seen cases before that when a player takes another hit to the head, it could make their epilepsy worse,” Kelly said. “As parents, as tough as it was for her, we knew we had to keep her safe. It was the last thing we wanted to do, we wanted her to play, but we also needed to think of her future.”

Hershberger continued her regular checkups with specialists and doctors. Every six months, she would have an EEG to keep track of brain activity and tests continued to remain clear and consistent.

They were part of what kept providing hope to Hershberger that maybe she could play again one day.

THE RETURN

The day Hershberger finally found the courage to lace up her cleats again and kick the soccer ball around in her backyard, it still was not determined that she would return for her senior season with the Falcons.

Even after she attended her first practice of the season in July, it was still undecided.

It certainly was on her mind, though.

“I remember when she asked if she could play again … my heart went to my stomach,” Kelly said. “I felt some guilt holding her back, because I did not want her to miss out on her passion, but the fear of injury scared me.”

Haley desperately wanted to return to the field.

There were still a lot of unanswered questions.

Is it the right thing to do?

Can she return to the sport safely?

What are the risks, all of the risks, involved with the decision?

As a family, and with some guidance from Haley’s doctors, each individual question was reviewed and discussed so that a rational decision could be made.

Those talks returned some very important non-negotiables. 

If she was going to play, she could not ever head the ball and she also must wear protective headgear.

With those, and other, guidelines in place, the family came to a decision for Haley to play her senior season.

“I had not seen that spark in her in a long time,” Kelly said. “So much about her began to change. We had our Haley back.”

She started practicing with the team regularly and it was like she had never left.

“Being back on the field felt so good,” said Haley, who had been a starter for the Falcons as both a freshman and sophomore as a defender and has split time between defense and holding midfield this season. “Coach Schindler kept making comments that it was like I had never left and that really hit hard. It was an emotional feeling.”

It was emotional for Schindler, too.

“As a coach and a fan of Haley’s, it was easy to be excited to see her back doing something she loved doing,” Schindler said. “It’s definitely a coaching moment I will never forget.”

For Hersheberger, she also forgot a little bit about what it would be like.

“I was not sure how it would be to train again. I had not touched a ball regularly in I don’t even know how long,” Haley added. “Being back just filled me with happiness — it put me back in my glory.”

That glory would find a new level on Friday, Aug. 15, when the Falcons opened their season at Rootstown.

Midway through the first half, Hershberger unloaded a shot from about 20 yards out that curled into the upper-right of the goal.

A moment almost too good to be true.

“It was such an amazing shot,” Kelly said. “Shaun and I just looked at each other, and we just teared up.”

It was the perfect start to a season that once seemed improbable.

“Seeing her back on the field has just filled my heart with happiness, seeing how happy it has made her,” Kelly said. “I still get nervous watching her out there, but she has learned to change her style of play to protect herself.

“My Haley is back. She is one of the strongest girls I know, and we are so proud of her. She is in good moods, she wants to talk, she is back with her friends.”

And one of her best friends, named soccer, is back with her.