TAMPA, Fla. — After the tragedy of losing her son, a mother has dedicated her life to spreading awareness of the connection between contact sports and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
Karen Zegel’s son, Patrick Risha, was a standout football player who later took his own life.
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“Most moms will tell you that their son’s the most beautiful, most wonderful person in the world. And in my case it was true,” Zegel said.
She said she began noticing changes during Patrick’s years playing high school football in Pennsylvania.
“He would get angry, short-tempered and that was not like him. He was always sweet and kind,” Zegel said.
After more years of football at Dartmouth, Patrick’s struggles worsened. His father’s death added to his pain. A decade later, he died by suicide at the age of 32, leaving behind a young son.
“We came to learn that the reason we lost him was because he had too much repetitive head trauma from playing football and we just don’t want that to keep going on for other families,” Zegel said.
She and her husband, Doug, went on to create the advocacy group stopcte.org.
“We learned the hard way that the brain is much more fragile than any of us knew,” Doug Zegel said.
The couple is in Tampa this week for the International Summit on Repetitive Brain Trauma, an event hosted by the Mac Parkman Foundation. Founder Bruce Parkman also lost his son to suicide linked to concussive trauma.
“I miss him every day. I’ll see him again,” Parkman told me in an 2022 interview.
Researchers have increasingly connected repeated head impacts in sports to the risk of developing CTE, a degenerative brain disease that can cause memory loss, impaired judgment, aggression, depression and suicidal behavior. While football has been most strongly associated with the condition, studies have also found cases among athletes in hockey, soccer, rugby, cheerleading and even military veterans exposed to blast injuries.
There is a growing push to delay tackle football until at least age 14 and to reduce contact in other sports.
The NFL previously settled a class-action lawsuit with retired players, and one study found that one in three retired players believe they have symptoms of CTE.
As a new NFL season begins, the Zegels said they will not be watching.
“I can’t. I can’t,” Karen said.
“It’s not entertaining for us,” Doug added.
“I know what that family is going to go through,” Karen said.
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