Source: newsroom.co.nz | Repost Duerson Fund 6/27/2022 –
Told she shouldn’t play basketball again after multiple concussions, former Tall Fern Samara Gallaher will suit up for the first game of the new Tauihi women’s professional league – driven to make a difference for young girls.
It was a living hell.
Just as she’d reached the prime of her career, Tall Fern Samara Gallaher could no longer walk into a basketball stadium.
The bright lights, the roar of the crowd, the repeated hammering of balls on the hardwood floors. All those things she loved about her game were suddenly too much for her muddled brain to handle.
For 16 months, the Dunedin-born basketballer best known as Sammy suffered through constant migraines, fatigue and over-sensitivity to light and noise.
“I spent a lot of that time in bed resting, sitting there literally doing nothing for weeks on end,” Gallaher says. That was tough for a player renowned for diving on loose ball, fully committing to a lay-up, never afraid to put her body on the line.
She put a dot on her bedroom wall in Melbourne to stare at every day until she didn’t get a headache.