Hauser’s soccer practice was going along fairly smoothly, much like any other practice, on Sept. 1 until it nearly turned catastrophic.
First-year coach Barry Grimes was putting his team through a 4-on-6 drill, working on passing in tight spaces. A ball was mis-hit and struck Grimes square in the left eye socket and cheekbone.
The impact knocked him out. An ambulance was called, and the EMT said Grimes was posturing, and his blood pressure had skyrocketed to 220/100.
By that time, medics made the decision to lifeline Grimes to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.
“They were afraid of either a fractured cheekbone or a brain bleed and were worried about a possible stroke,” Grimes said. “They tried to put me in an ambulance first, and when they sat me up, the blood pressure skyrocketed again. The helicopter had already landed at the time, so they made the decision if there was a possible stroke or some of the tests that they had to run, they were going to take me to Indy anyway. So the decision was made at that point when the blood pressure went up again to put me in the helicopter.”
Fortunately for Grimes, 44, none of those worst-case scenarios resulted from his injury. He did have a severe concussion and was kept overnight at Methodist while health personnel put a heart monitor on him and ran an MRI and some brain scans.
Meanwhile, an opthomologist put stain in Grimes’ eye to make sure there weren’t any lacerations and ran a lot of tests on the eye.
“I had a lot of problems with vision in my left eye, so they ran a lot of my tests in my eye,” Grimes said. “Everything seemed to check out, so I am going to follow-ups now. For the most part, I would say after about a week-and-a-half, I started improving decently. There’s still some lingering effects, but nothing too major. I’m pretty close. I still have some headaches, but other than that, I’m still doing OK.”
A special education teacher at Hauser Junior High, Grimes was off from teaching and coaching for about three weeks.
“The first couple weeks were pretty structured with just staying in a room, staying in the dark, taking it easy, not a lot of extra activity,” Grimes said. “I went back to the doctor (Sept. 14), and at that point is when I started feeling a little bit better. Then at that point, I started living life a little bit more.”
Grimes was cleared to return to teaching and coaching on Sept. 24. So he went back to school that day, and that evening, he returned to the sidelines for the Jets’ 4-0 win at Columbus Christian.
Last week, Grimes coached three more games. He’ll lead Hauser into Monday’s Southwestern (Shelby) Sectional opener against Morristown.
“I was super excited to come back,” Grimes said. “I missed the kids and have a lot of support from the kids. Kids even showed up at my house the night after they won against Southwestern and brought me some gifts. They came to check in on me, so that was really cool.”
A 1995 Columbus East graduate, Grimes played soccer for the Olympians and coached JV girls soccer and JV softball there when it began in the mid-1990s. He also has coached parks and rec soccer and some basketball.
Grimes previously had concussions from playing basketball and from a car accident about four years ago when he hit a patch of ice and struck a bridge on 25th street near Petersville.
On his latest injury, Grimes said he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It was a freak accident,” Grimes said. “You couldn’t have planned it. It just happened.”
