Joe Akers’ career with the UConn football team may be over before it even
began.
Akers, a freshman center who enrolled in January to get the jump on the
2005 season, suffered a concussion during a scrimmage Saturday in
Storrs. Akers also was knocked
unconscious during the state championship game while playing for Hereford High
in Maryland last December, and the
succession of head injuries may bring his promising football career to a
premature end.
UConn head coach Randy Edsall said Monday morning that Akers had gone
home to Reisterstown,
Md., for more medical tests at nearby
Johns
Hopkins
Hospital in
Baltimore.
Edsall said the Akers family
would discuss the situation internally, then meet with the UConn medical staff
Friday to decide Akers’ future. Edsall said it’s “a possibility” that Akers’
career is over.
“First and foremost
is his health,” Edsall said.
Akers was the first player in
Maryland high school history to be
named all-state three times. He was the No. 2 center in camp behind redshirt
freshman Trey Tonsing at the time of his injury.
“I’ve talked to Joe and his mother and told them what my thoughts were
right now,” Edsall said. “I said, ‘But let’s just get all the information,’ and
then I want them as a family to sit down and talk, so that when they get back
here, they’ll talk to the doctors here, and then I’ll talk to them again and
we’ll see what direction we go in. Like I told his mother, my main concern first
and foremost is the health of Joe Akers more than anything else.”
With Akers out, redshirt freshman Keith Gray has moved from defensive end
to center.