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inside.hokiesports.com
25
baseball spotlight
matt dauby
T
he temperature was approximately 43
degrees, with wind gusts whipping the
normally lazy flags at the University of
Virginia’s Davenport Field. Afton Mountain
loomed far in the background, and the sun
played hide-and-seek among the clouds on this
brisk afternoon. There certainly had been more
comfortable conditions for playing baseball.
The overcast afternoon paled, though, in
comparison to the dark clouds forming in the
back of Matt Dauby’s mind. A third baseman
on the Hokies’ baseball squad, he recognized
the all-too-familiar signs and he desperately
hoped that no UVA batter would lace one to
him at his third base spot.
Unfortunately, a sharply hit grounder, one
off the bat of Nate Irving, came right toward
him with two outs and runners on base in
the bottom of the seventh inning. The fear
practically blinded him. He nearly never
saw the ball, as it skipped into left field. The
go-ahead run raced home, and the Hokies
wound up losing 7-4 to the then-No. 1-ranked
Cavaliers.
Dauby, charged with an error on the play,
wanted to hide. He was a finely tuned athlete,
a starter in the ACC. But the panic was just
paralyzing—and embarrassing.
He and his teammates got on the bus. He sat
in his seat and retreated into his own secluded
world, which had turned into a dark place.
“I knew something was wrong and that I had
to get help,” Dauby said.
The team arrived back on campus at 9:30
that evening. Dauby told his teammates that he
was going to go out with a girl.
He instead hopped in his car and drove nine
straight hours to his hometown of Carmel,
Indiana, just outside of Indianapolis.
He wasn’t sure if he would return.
Depression. Anxietydisorders. Panic attacks.
Mental illness. Most Americans shrug off these
terms, but the statistics show a burgeoning
problem. According to the National Network
of Depression Centers, one in five Americans
will be impacted by mental illnesses during
their lifetimes and as many Americans die from
suicide as from breast cancer.
Mental illnesses do not discriminate, as
many high-profile stories attest. Examples
include Junior Seau, a former San Diego
Chargers linebacker, and Mike Flanagan, a
former pitcher with the Baltimore Orioles. Both
ended their lives, though for differing reasons.
Dauby’s struggles with panic attacks,
anxiety and depression originated because
of concussions. He suffered three in high
school, including two while playing basketball.
Unaware of the long-term effects of a
concussion, Dauby’s parents, Steve and Barb,
didn’t realize the magnitude of the effects on
their son until a conversation between Steve
andMatt took place in Steve’s car one day while
Matt was still in high school.
“He’s always been a great kid, but he was
down and acting like a teenager, acting like he
didn’t care,” Steve Dauby said. “I’m like, ‘What
are you doing?’ He broke down in the car and
started crying. He said, ‘You don’t even know
what’s going on.’ I said, ‘Well, tell me.’ That’s
when he opened up. He said he felt badly every
day and couldn’t control his thoughts.
“I didn’t know where it was coming from,
but I knew then we had to get him in to see
somebody. We had a relationship with a
psychologist at a local school and I took him in
to see her, and she said, ‘Steve, he’s got post-
concussion syndrome.’ I’m like, ‘What is that?’
I didn’t know anything about it.”
The Mayo Clinic defines post-concussion
syndrome as a “complex disorder in which
various symptoms—such as headaches and
dizziness—last for weeks and sometimes
months after the injury that caused the
concussion.” The symptoms occur usually
within the first seven to 10 days and go away
within three months, but they can persist
for longer.
Matt Dauby was struggling physically and
academically, as the cumulative effect of the
blows kept him from focusing. His doctors
kept him from playing baseball his sophomore
season and basketball during his junior year.
Shortly after the diagnosis, Steve Dauby
took his son to see Dr. Micky Collins, an
internationally renowned expert in sports-
related concussions based at the University of
Pittsburgh Medical Center, on three or four
different occasions. Collins agreed with the
diagnosis of post-concussion syndrome, but
decided to clear Dauby to play baseball in the
spring of his junior year—provided he took his
medication daily.
“He [Collins] told us that it [the effects] could
go away or not go away,” Steve Dauby said. “But
he was more worried about the depression
[from Matt not being allowed to play sports]
than he was about Matt getting hit in the head
again. He didn’t want him to play basketball,
but he would let him play baseball. There was
a risk, but the risk of depression was greater.”
The symptoms subsided somewhat, as Matt
returned to the baseball field. He ultimately
became a Division I prospect, receiving offers
frommost of the schools in Indiana and several
outside of the state.
The Virginia Tech staff, led by Pete Hughes
at the time, saw him at a baseball tournament
in Atlanta. They likedwhat they saw and invited
him for an official visit.
“I honestly didn’t come with a lot of
expectations, thinking I probably wasn’t going
to go here,” he said. “But when I stepped on
campus, I was totally blown away. I loved it.”
He committed after receiving a scholarship
offer. Everything went well for Dauby during
his freshman season in 2013. He played in 39
games, starting 21 of them, and he made good
grades. Things were looking upward.
But the side effects returned.
Steve Dauby noticed when he traveled to
LSU to watchMatt and the Hokies play. He saw
his son at the team hotel before the game and
he almost told Virginia Tech coach Pat Mason,
who had taken over for Hughes, not to play
Matt. During warm-ups, Matt locked himself
in the dugout bathroom and started crying. He
told no one on the team.
“Weeks of hopelessness, not feeling right,
all came out about 30 minutes to game time,”
Matt said. “We were getting ready to play in
front of 10,000 fans at one of the best stadiums
in the country on national television. This is
every baseball player’s dream growing up.
“But 30 minutes from one of the coolest
opportunities of my baseball career, I was
crying my eyes out, wondering what was wrong
with me and praying that the feelings I were
having would be gone the next day, just like I
did every night.”
Dauby pulled himself together enough to
play in the game. He committed two errors.
The stress of being a shortstop in the ACC
combined with the stress of taking high-level
accounting classes only made the situation
worse. He had tried a newmedication, but that,
too, wasn’t helping.
He still tried to play and there were pockets
of excellence. He notched two doubles and two
runs against Delaware and three hits and a
homer against UMass Lowell. He had two hits
against VCU.
But his struggle with anxiety and panic
attacks became apparent at the start of ACC
play. He played all three games of the Clemson
series, but Mason noticed something was amiss.
“I was very worried,” Mason said. “The first
thing that I had told him early that fall was that
I was here for him. I was the head coach then
[in his first year], and I knew what he had dealt
with. So we started that relationship. I wanted
to break that ice and alleviate any stress that
could be there for him. He did a good job of
hiding some things, so I probably didn’t see as
much as I would have liked to.
“We had an open communication process in
which he’d let me know if he was having a bad
day, but I don’t think he was at a point where he
could be honest every day.”
Dauby did not play the first two games of
that UVA series, but Mason inserted him into
the starting lineup for the finale. Steve Dauby
watched that game on television and knew
exactly what was transpiring.
After the game ended, he called his son.
“That was the last straw,” Steve said. “I told
him, ‘We’re done. You need to come home.’”
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