Albuquerque Sol F.C. News Release -- www.abqsolfc.com
Friday, July 11, 2014
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – During the Albuquerque Sol’s final regular season game this Saturday night, the late Pat Grange will be remembered and honored during ALS Awareness Night. The first 250 fans into the stadium will receive a commemorative Pat Grange T-Shirt. Gates open at 6pm. Kickoff is at 7:30pm. The Sol will be retiring Grange's number in a special halftime commemoration.
Grange played soccer for the University of New Mexico and in the PDL with the Chicago Fire U-23. Grange died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS – more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) at the young age of 29 in April of 2012. He was recently profiled in a feature piece by ESPN's E:60.
The Sol are also taking action towards addressing the issue of mild traumatic brain injury in sports by announcing their collaboration with VisionQuest Biomedical in developing an inexpensive, portable, easy-to-use concussion screening application called ConQuest.
VisionQuest Biomedical, an Albuquerque-based research and development company, specializes in advancing medical technologies for clinical environments. VisionQuest has obtained a Phase I Small Business Innovative Research grant for developing ConQuest. By assessing neurocognitive and neurosensory symptoms, ConQuest will be the first completely objective method for evaluating mild traumatic brain injury. It is their hope trainers and coaches everywhere will be able to accurately and easily assess athletes for mild traumatic brain injury.
The Albuquerque Sol and VisionQuest will announce their collaboration toward developing ConQuest this Saturday, and welcome all fans to demo the device and supply valuable feedback. This Albuquerque-based partnership intends to honor a memorable individual in addition to taking the initiative toward giving coaches and players a diagnostic tool to premptively assess brain injury. This tool would then encourage people to seek appropriate medical care in cases of brain trauma that otherwise would have gone untreated.