ELON, N.C. – Elon women’s basketball senior Kelsey Evans has made her mark over the past three years on the court and in the record book. She is also making progress off the court with her undergraduate research. The exercise science major recently sat down with elonphoenix.com to discuss her research and the opportunity she recently had to share it with the public.
 
What is the focus of your undergraduate research?
“The project that we’re working on is the effects of concussion on cognitive function in collegiate athletes. I’m specifically looking at balance, postural stability and reaction time. There are other aspects to the research as well, including genetic influences and other cognitive functions, but my main topic is balance and reaction time and how concussions can affect those.”
 
What made you want to choose this topic?
“I think it is very relatable, especially being an athlete. You hear about it (concussions) in the news and there’s very little understood about it. Its very interesting to me, I’m very interested in neuroscience and being able to combine that with athletics is pretty cool.”
 
What have you enjoyed the most about your research?
“I love to learn new knowledge, just to read the research that’s been done and to create a question yourself and think, ‘How can I answer this?’, ‘How can I better the previous research?’ or ‘How can I affect people in a positive way?’.”
 
Can you describe the conference you recently attended?
“It was a two-day conference in Pennsylvania called the Concussions in Athletics Conference. On Thursday morning and early afternoon we listened to lectures for the most part. There were experts in the field, a sports neurologist, even athletic trainers with their PhD that have been doing research in this field for the longest time. They all came and spoke to us about their research. Thursday night we did a poster session and that’s when I presented my poster. Drew Gardner (former men’s soccer player) was there as well. He presented a poster, and Dr. Ketchum and Dr. Hall also presented a poster. It was pretty much an open forum, meaning that people came along and asked about my poster and about what I did. I walked them through my results and where I wanted to go with it. Friday was pretty similar, mostly lectures and meet and greet. It was an awesome opportunity to meet these experts in the field and just introduce myself. I had read the research of most of the people that were there and based my research off of what they’d done.”
 
Can you describe the process and results of your research?
“There were two guys working on this project last year, and I was shadowing and helping them. In the summer I took ownership of it. I wanted to look at something different- the balance aspect. A lot of research says that balance is negatively impacted by concussions. I also wanted to look at reaction time because I think balance and reaction time are pretty important in sports. I had a lot of participants but I want to continue to get more to see if there is a trend in my results. We saw balance deficits but we actually saw that reaction time and balance was correlated, so as reaction time got worse, balance got worse. Something interesting that we saw was concussed athletes sometimes did better on the balance and we think it might have something to do with them being more rigid if they know they’ve had a series of concussions. It could have something to do with cocontracting of the muscles and things like that. We’re going to try and go a different way with that and try adding an EMG. Our results aren’t exactly what we wanted to see but I’ll continue to get more participants and see where it goes from there.”
 
What do you hope will come of your research?
“I just really hope that people realize how important it is to take this kind of injury seriously. For the longest time, it’s always been a toughen up and get back out there type of mentality, but looking at the research it’s scary. It’s scary to see the kind of deficits that continue for months and months. You see these retired athletes from the NFL that are suing because they don’t know their own name. Even though you can’t visibly see the injury, its there. Like it was mentioned at the conference, you can walk with a gimp in your knee for the rest of your life, you can’t live with a gimp in your brain.”
 
Written by Kara Johnson, Elon Athletic Communications Student Assistant