SPORTS SOCCER
Shutout
About a month later, D.C. United moved her from the active payroll to disability payments, Simpson says, and according to her lawyer, David Schloss, her workers’ compensation benefits ended last September. That came seven months after the team’s insurance company, Great Divide Insurance Co., sent Simpson to get a medical examination from an independent neurosurgeon, who concluded she did not suffer a head strike. Simpson, a former University of Maryland women’s soccer goalkeeper, is still struggling with her recovery, and has filed a claim against D.C. United and Great Divide to continue receiving workers’ compensation and recoup lost wages. There are people in her life, she says, that still have trouble believing what she’s going through. That’s part of the reason she wants to become an advocate for athletes struggling with traumatic brain injuries and their caregivers. “I have been, pretty much my entire adult life, trying to convince people, and oftentimes people really close to me, family friends, that concussions are real,” she says. “This isn’t made up. These are real symptoms. And just
Two years after her accident at D.C. United’s Audi Field, Lindsay Simpson wants to help other athletes suffering from traumatic brain injuries. By Kelyn Soong @KelynSoong
Virginia, examined Simpson at the behest of Great Divide on Feb. 28, 2019, and asserts in a report after viewing video of the incident that it was “unlikely based on this film that she actually sustained a head strike.” In a video of the incident viewed by City Paper, the long metal object appears in the frame and proceeds to fall somewhere near the right side of Simpson’s head and shoulder. She bends forward after the strike, and moments later loses balance and is seen sitting down in a chair while her co-hosts, Dave Johnson and Devon McTavish, among others, check on her. Hope writes in the medical examination report, obtained by City Paper, that “while she has a slight flinch corresponding with the sound of the railing coming loose, she does not flinch as it goes by her head or move in a reaction to a head strike stimulus. Instead, her movement secondary to the trauma occurs when the railing hits her shoulder. I am convinced that there was absolutely no head strike.” At the suggestion of her lawyer, Simpson did not read the report. She feels betrayed by Hope’s conclusions after reading excerpts of Lindsay Simpson
Darrow Montgomery
For months leading up to July 1 4, Lindsay Simpson was filled with dread. That date marked the two-year anniversary of what she simply refers to as “the accident,” when part of a railing became dislodged and struck her from above as she prepared for a pregame show during the opening of D.C. United’s newly constructed Audi Field. Her post-accident world has become insular. Simpson, who served as D.C. United’s sideline reporter and vice president of marketing and communications, spends most of her days recovering and only sees her husband, Nathan Getty, a few family members in the D.C. area, and close friends. But as the anniversary of her accident neared, Simpson, 34, decided it would be an appropriate time to publicly share her story of what she describes as an altered life, no matter how painful the anniversary of that day feels. “I’m ready to ... stop seeing it, in my own life, as the day my life ended or the day my life changed forever in a negative way and start seeing it as the day God gave me a chance to live,” she says. “And so that’s where I really turned the page and started seeing July 14 not as the worst day of my life, but as my second birthday, because nearly every medical professional I’ve seen has told me that there’s no reason I should be alive.” Simpson and I first met at the University of Maryland at College Park, where we briefly overlapped during our graduate school journalism programs, and I consider her a friend. I’ve watched Simpson’s career develop from afar, and had planned to say hello to her during the Audi Field opener, but figured with all the commotion of opening night that she would, in her multiple roles, be a little busy. I would catch up with her another time. Days after the inaugural game at Audi Field, Simpson told City Paper that the accident left her with a concussion. By her own estimate, that was either her seventh or eighth concussion. She doesn’t remember the accident and didn’t have a “single recollection for weeks.”
“We try to laugh about it and say, I wonder who I was looking for, the Spanish soccer player I [must have] had in mind, and try to make jokes about it,” she says. “But it breaks my heart that I did that to him.” That year had been shaping up to be the best of her life. She got engaged in January, and then a month later was promoted to vice president of marketing and communications. Shortly after, D.C. United announced that it would be signing international soccer superstar Wayne Rooney. She would work late and show up the next morning at 6 a.m. to get in a workout before starting another day at RFK Stadium, the team’s previous home. “But I wasn’t miserable,” Simpson says. “I was in heaven. It was like every dream I’d ever had was coming true all at once. Then it all changed in an instant.” On July 14, 2018, prior to the team’s long awaited debut match at Audi Field, Simpson had just wrapped an interview with D.C. United legend Jaime Moreno in the locker room before she headed toward the outdoor set near the pitch for a pregame broadcast. Fans had not yet filed into the stadium, and
because you can’t see it on an X-ray or read it in bloodwork, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.” Simpson pauses to gather her emotions as she talks about the aftermath of the accident. People who were near her have filled in some of the blanks, including the moment she stared Getty in the face and asked him to go get her husband.
6 july 31, 2020 washingtoncitypaper.com
as Simpson was texting on her phone while on set, she heard a loud clanging noise. A large metal object, described as a “railing” or “railing cap,” fell from above and struck her. Where it hit her depends on who you ask. Simpson and her lawyer believe it hit her on the head and shoulder. Dr. Donald Hope, an independent neurosurgeon at the Center for Cranial and Spine Surgery in Northern
the report for the first time in a Washington Post article. In response to the report’s findings, Schloss says that Hope “is not a concussion specialist … He’s a spinal spinalist.” “When I read his reaction, I just started shaking,” Simpson says. “I almost threw up. I mean, it hurt. It felt like I had just gotten punched in the gut again. And honestly, that’s what the last two years have felt like. It’s just
