Injury's Impact: Stories of Resilience - Part III: Leo's Resilience
Leo Burgess is the current player-manager of Vasco da Gama, a club currently playing in Bermuda’s second tier. He is also a former semiprofessional player in England. Leo not only plays for Vasco, but also his academy runs a morning and afternoon program at Somersfield during the week, many of the players for his academy are Somersfield students. From Monday to Thursday there will be sessions in the morning inside the Somersfield gym at 6am and there will be afternoon sessions as well at 3:30 in the afternoon. I spoke with Leo in detail about how he had been mentally and physically impacted by injuries and how he overcame them throughout his career.
“Injury affected me many times. I had a lot of goals in football. When I was playing in Bermuda, an injury stopped me from playing a full season for many years. Which means I couldn’t reach my targets of getting leading goal scorer, I couldn’t reach a level of consistency during my seasons.” Leo had high ambition in his early days as a footballer, it was clear that the injuries stopped him from reaching the heights he intended to get to throughout his career. Like becoming Bermuda’s top scorer for example.
“It was hard getting back to moving the way I used to after torn ACLs, after meniscus tears and MCL tears all in my knees.” This is a clear indication of where his biggest problems were physically throughout his career.
“Hearing people say you need a plan B because if you get injured your career is over. That was the biggest worry, not being able to play anymore. I had many injuries that impacted me in the way of creating a fear of never being able to play again” Having been told you need a plan B, made Leo worry about his future in football. The possibility of potentially having to end his career early due to frequent knee injuries really worried him.
“While playing in the UK semi pro it happened again. I got crunched and couldn’t walk for 3-4 months.”
However, despite suffering such significant setbacks through injury during his career this didn’t stop him. “But overcoming them was easy, at first it was hard of course because I couldn’t move the same, but I was always determined to never let an injury stop me or hold me back. Having a goal within football that was bigger than the injury kept me focused on always getting back up no matter how many times I got knocked down. So, staying focused on the goals I would say was what helped me get back up and come back stronger.”