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With the Penn State University Icers on the penalty kill, C.J. Patrick raced into the corner to the left of his own goal, gathered the puck and fired it down ice. As soon as the Icer forward let the shot go, two University of Findlay forecheckers converged on Patrick, hitting him up high and knocking him backward.

As the hit reached full impact, Patrick's head was squeezed in between the two players on one side and the edge of the boards on the other. Patrick's head absorbed the blow -- he never fell to the ice -- but as he made his way back to the bench he knew something was wrong.

"After I got hit down in the corner, I looked up ice, and all I saw was a big white thing," Patrick, a junior center and team co-captain, said. "I looked at the bench and I saw three of them moving, so I just started to skate. I couldn't keep my balance, so I had to put my stick down and just push myself over. And then I was trying to figure out how to step up into the door and I couldn't figure it out. I made it to the door, rammed my stick into the boards and just flopped onto the bench."

A disoriented Patrick knew he had just suffered his second concussion - in two days.

Concussions have become a major concern in the sports world recently. After many years of ignorance, more and more athletes, trainers, coaches and doctors are learning the dangers of concussions. Lots of athletes are starting to sit out days or even weeks due to concussions. Some have even had to end their careers.

Concussions aren't new injuries in sports. The blunt forces to the head have always been there, but it wasn't until the past few years that concussions have been taken seriously. And it wasn't until the past few years that Patrick started taking his own concussions seriously, either.

C.J. Patrick Courtesy of the Penn State Icers

Patrick, son of Pittsburgh Penguin general manager Craig Patrick, has suffered nine concussions since fourth grade. His first one, and his self-described worst, happened while he was skiing. While he was skiing down some moguls, another kid jumped off a mogul behind him and landed on Patrick's head with his skis. Patrick was unconscious for 10 minutes and ended up spending several days in the hospital "puking (his) guts out and the whole thing."

Today Patrick speaks very casually about his head injuries. After suffering from nine concussions, he could be considered a veteran.

Not all of his concussions have required spending time in the hospital, but the more concussions a person has, their susceptibility to getting them in the future increases. The danger associated with future concussions increases, as well.

Patrick's concussion on Nov. 9 against Findlay came a day after he received a smaller concussion, what Patrick calls a "bell ringer", against Kent State.

It happened when he was fighting for a puck in the corner with a Kent State defender. As the two players went at it, Patrick's helmet was knocked off. The Kent State player took advantage of the situation and cross-checked Patrick in the back of the head, causing Patrick's forehead to smack off of the ice. Patrick immediately got up and headed for the bench.

"You could see on the tape that guys were just pushing me in the right direction," Patrick said. "I was a little bit woozy. But then I got back to the bench, sat down and felt pretty good so I just kept playing."

After the game Patrick said he felt fine and wanted to play the next game against Findlay. Joe Battista, head coach of the Penn State club hockey team in the American Collegiate Hockey Association, said at the time Patrick wasn't diagnosed as having suffered a concussion against Kent State.

"He said he was fine," Battista said. "There was no medical diagnosis for a concussion. If it was missed, it was missed. No one came to me and said he (definitely) had a concussion."

With no official word of a concussion, the coaching staff allowed Patrick to play the next day. That's when Patrick's medical problems compounded.

The second concussion in two days nearly ended Patrick's ice hockey career. For a while it looked like the Icer co-captain would at least have to sit out the rest of this season due to complications from the two blows to the head.

For the first five minutes after the concussion against Findlay Patrick experienced a splitting headache. But that's nothing too unusual, he said. For the rest of that night, Patrick's eyes were really sensitive to lights - to the point where he could barely open his eyes. Dull headaches continued the rest of the night, as well. Once again, nothing unusual.

Everything seemed to get back to normal for a while, but then the headaches started again. And this time they lasted for months.

"The first week wasn't so bad but it started to build up after a while," Patrick said.

The lingering headaches never lasted very long - 15 seconds at the most. But Patrick would have three or four of these headaches an hour all day long. These painful and annoying headaches lasted until January.

For a while Patrick's entire life was almost completely taken over by the concussions. He couldn't practice or play for the Icers. He couldn't ride an exercise bike. He couldn't do anything that would raise his blood pressure. If he did, the headaches would soon follow.

"Even walking to class gave me headaches," Patrick, a Management, Science and Information Systems (MSIS) major, said. "Anything that raises your blood pressure, you're not allowed to do. The only treatment I had was anti-inflammatory pills, which didn't even work."

Patrick, who stands 5-feet-11 and weighs 200 pounds, said concussions could be the most frustrating of all injuries. First of all, there are no outward signs of an injury. A person suffering from a concussion looks and acts normal, except for the headaches and occasional dizziness.

Patrick said that made it hard for others to understand what he was going through. He would be walking through the stands at a home game and people would ask why he wasn't playing. Patrick would tell them he had a concussion and they were shocked that the effects from a concussion could last so long. Some of his teammates were also amazed that he was out of the lineup for months because of concussions.

Personally, Patrick was frustrated by the entire ordeal.

"I hurt my knee twice my freshman year, and it kept me out five weeks each time, but it was something I could rehab," Patrick said. "It was something I could fight to get back from. But with this, all I could do was just sit there and take Advil.

"I was convinced that they were going to go away over Christmas break, and they just weren't going away. I tried skating a couple times, but I felt like I was going to die the next day. It was killer. And it wasn't like I could feel them going away, either. They were there, and they always were. If they were going away they were going away so gradually that I couldn't tell."

When Patrick realized the headaches weren't going to go away, he started to get concerned. He desperately wanted to return to hockey, but he was under the impression that if the headaches didn't stop he would have to cut his season short, and perhaps his career, as well.

Patrick was receiving good treatment for his concussions from the Icers' team psychologist, Dr. Ruben Echemendia. Echemendia had been observing Patrick since the beginning of the season as part of a study on concussions he developed at Penn State. The study is used by varsity athletes at Penn State and has recently been adopted by the National Hockey League.

Echemendia advised Patrick to wait until the headaches went away and then try another comeback.

"One of the things that I encouraged C.J. to do was to think about a risk- benefit analysis about whether he should return to play at all," Echemendia said. "We know that people who have concussions in the past are at higher risk for a concussion in the future. C.J.'s the kind of kid who has been wanting to return to play since day one. But he's also the kind of kid that I can trust because he'll tell me the truth. He's not going to underestimate the severity of his symptoms because he knows what the possible ramifications are.

"So our game plan was to wait until C.J. was completely symptom free before we allowed him to return to play."

Patrick and his dad wanted to make sure he did the right thing, so they sought other opinions. Besides Echemendia, C.J. talked with four other doctors at Penn State and near his home in Pittsburgh.

Overall, one doctor told him to quit hockey for good, one gave no opinion and three said to come back. The doctor who told Patrick to hang up the skates was the Penguins' team physician, Dr. Chip Burke.

By the time January rolled around, most hope was lost of Patrick making a comeback this season. Even Battista talked as if Patrick was done for the season. It wasn't until Echemendia suggested something to Patrick that everyone became optimistic again.

It turned out that Patrick was having three different types of headaches all along, and that two of the types had nothing to do with concussions at all. They were sinus and stress related. From then on, Patrick pushed those other headaches aside and concentrated on the post-concussive ones in his temple.

"The last two weeks I could tell that things were starting to die off," Patrick said. "I was having three kinds of headaches, and I'm still having two of them, but they have nothing to do with concussions. I kind of pushed those out of my head and didn't think about them. And I just started paying attention to the ones in my temple. I could tell they were dying off, but they might have been dying off the whole time...I don't know."

With permission from Echemendia and his father, Patrick returned to the Icer lineup on Feb. 7 against Delaware, almost exactly three months after suffering the back-to-back concussions that sent him to the injured list in the first place.

"With the medical care that he's getting," Craig Patrick said, "I have complete confidence in their abilities."

Battista said it was a blessing to get one of his top penalty killers and leaders back on the ice.

"We were ultra-conservative," Battista said. "He probably could have been playing a lot earlier."

It seems like everything is back to normal inside C.J. Patrick's head. At practice Patrick and his teammates paw and smack each other in the head with their gloves while they wait in line to do drills. During games Patrick skates hard into corners and shows no signs of backing away from physical contact. Patrick even centered Penn State's top checking line as the team won the 1998 ACHA National Championship. While matching up against the opponents' top scoring lines, Patrick's line did not allow an even-strength goal against.

But Patrick knows that all it takes is one sudden blow to the head and the problems will come right back again. And this time they could be even worse.

"I'm just relying on luck now, I guess," Patrick said. "I told myself that if I get more than a little bell-ringer, I'll hang it up.

"The tenth one's a charm."

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