Olympic dreams derailed by injury during qualifier bout

Written By Garry Smits, Jacksonville.com

No one would tell Blanche Wingo anything.

All she knew is that her daughter, Ishika Lay, had been taken to a hospital in Toledo, Ohio, after a boxing match in the Police Athletic League National Championships that also were serving as a qualifier for the U.S. Olympic Trials.

When her son Curtis Williams picked her up to drive her to the hospital, he told Wingo only that Ishika had been injured in her second-round bout. Initially, Wingo wasn’t alarmed because it wasn’t the first time her daughter was hurt in competition or some kind of high-risk activity.

Lay had competed in volleyball, softball, track, basketball, gymnastics and tennis in high school in her hometown of Marion, Ind., and later in Columbus, Ga. Wingo was accustomed to her daughter’s sprains and abrasions.

Shortly after moving to Jacksonville, Lay joined the Jacksonville Dixie Blues women’s tackle football team. She began riding a motorcycle and overcame serious injury after a 2002 accident on San Pablo Road.

Then, Lay discovered that women’s boxing would be added to the 2012 Olympics Games in London. She threw herself into the sport with the goal of representing her country.

But as Wingo was being driven 152 miles from Marion to Toledo St. Vincent’s Mercy Medical Center the night of Oct. 5, 2011, her intuition as a mother told her it was going to be serious.

“On the way to the hospital, I didn’t know the extent of her condition,” Wingo said. “But I could tell something was wrong because of the way my son was driving.”

When they arrived at the hospital, Wingo walked into the room where her 32-year-old daughter was lying in a bed. Tubes ran into her arm. Sensors beeped out her heart rate and blood pressure. A respirator hissed and hummed.

This was no pulled muscle or scuffed knee.

Wingo looked at one of the doctors. Again, information was not forthcoming.

“When I walked in the room, they didn’t say anything,” she said. “She was hooked up to IVs, respirators … We asked them to tell us something, anything. One of the doctors just waved his hand. It was like he was saying, ‘What you see is what you get.’ ”

The doctors weren’t sure what to tell Lay’s family at that point. All they knew is that she collapsed during her bout against Sherry Whetten of Tucson, Ariz., a short time after Whetten landed some blows that didn’t appear to have staggered Lay at the time.

Doctors were in the ring within seconds. Lay was in an ambulance within minutes. She was in a coma and the police report described her condition as “life-threatening.”

ALL-AROUND ATHLETE

Nearly four months later, Lay has surprised doctors and her family with the extent of her recovery. After being in critical condition for days and in a coma for weeks, she is home in Marion, going through rehabilitation three days a week at the Marion General Hospital and more rehab at home with her mother.

Lay can understand those who speak to her and can carry on limited conversations. She's playing Uno and Scrabble. She can take a few steps and eat without assistance.

"She's an amazing person, and she's surprised everyone," said John Phillips, a Jacksonville attorney who is representing the family. "This is one of the all-time feel-good stories I've ever been involved in. But there's still a long way to go."

And Uno and Scrabble are pretty sedate activities for an athlete who played so many sports and excelled at most of them.

Lay was all-conference in track, volleyball and basketball at Marion High School. She made select teams in softball. She tried gymnastics and tennis and once found herself in the same junior tennis tournament as Serena and Venus Williams.

The family moved to Columbus, Ga., in 1999, and Ishika made the all-state softball team and ran four events in track at Shaw High School. After that, she returned to Indiana and made the track team at Purdue, specializing in the long jump and heptathlon.

Blanche Wingo said she enjoyed watching her daughter run in track meets, especially relays.

“It was beautiful to watch her,” Wingo said. “She looked like she was free.”

Lay moved to Jacksonville after leaving Purdue on the advice of friends who said it was a good area for anyone who wanted to be active in sports, year-round. One of the activities she discovered was the Dixie Blues, a tackle football team, where Lay became one of the team’s best all-around players, making her biggest contribution at wide receiver.

Lay took up boxing in 2006 and won the state Police Athletic League and Golden Gloves titles for her weight class and the Southeast Coast regional championship three years in a row.

Those who watched her box said Lay had the potential to make the U.S. Olympic team.

“She was very good and also very athletic in terms of hand speed and footwork,” said L.B. Scott, a Jacksonville resident who is president of the board of directors for the Police Athletic League. “Some of the girls getting into boxing have natural size or strength but not much else. Ishika had the whole package. She also had a boxer’s mentality, which not all of the women have.”

One person had misgivings: Ishika’s mother.

“I never wanted her to try boxing,” Blanche Wingo said. “I wouldn’t have wanted any of her brothers to take up boxing. I don’t believe in people hitting on each other.”

But Wingo knew her daughter’s drive once she put her mind to something. There would be no stopping her.

‘HER EYES STARTED TO SHAKE’

Lay trained hard for the 2011 PAL National Championships, where the top three in each weight class would be invited to this year’s Olympic trials.

About 10 days before the PAL Nationals began in Toldeo, Lay complained about headaches after a sparring session. Phillips said Lay was not encouraged to see a doctor before going to Toledo.

She won her first bout with ease. Her mother called Lay the next morning.

“She told me she had won, and I kidded with her, telling her she forgot to call me before her fight,” Wingo said. “She said she had been concentrating on her fight but promised she’d call me after her fight that night.”

Lay was matched with Whetten in a second-round bout. That evening, her mother got a phone call instead from the police, and then her brother.

Eyewitness accounts differ on exactly what led to Lay’s collapse and who was winning the fight. Observers on the scene told the Toledo Blade that Lay was winning. Whetten’s recollection is that the fight was even.

Jerry Babcock, the National PAL Sports chairman who was watching the fight, told the Blade that there was a flurry of punches between the two women late in the second round, and that they separated. While circling each other, Lay collapsed.

“In my opinion, she did not collapse from a blow to the head,” Babcock told the Blade.

Whetten told the Arizona Daily Star that Lay’s eyes were “darting from side-to-side,” and that her legs appeared wobbly after Whetten landed a right on Lay. Whetten then said she threw a combination of punches, followed by a left uppercut.

“Her eyes started to shake,” Whetten said.

Lay kneeled, and then fell to the canvas. Two doctors moved into the ring but Lay already was unconscious.

Phillips believes now that Lay suffered second-impact syndrome, which involves receiving a blow to the head before being fully recovered from an earlier concussion. His investigation is centering on the possibility that Lay suffered a concussion during her sparring in Jacksonville before she went to Toledo, and fought twice before being completely healed.

“In hindsight, it was clear that she had a concussion 10 days earlier, leading up to the fight,” Phillips said. “She didn’t know it. She told people about the headaches. We’re investigating whether her managers and the PAL pushed her to fight.”

One of Lay's trainers, Linda Banister, declined to comment when contacted by the Times-Union. Another trainer, Sonny Cummings, and national PAL executive director Michael Dillyhon, did not return phone messages.

SECOND-IMPACT SYNDROME

Even with the recent awareness of concussions and sports, and the precautions being taken in football, second-impact syndrome is a relatively new term for the public. But the medical profession is well aware of it.

The main danger of second-impact syndrome, experts have said, is that the second blow to the head doesn’t....