An attorney for a former West Mifflin High School football player told a jury on Thursday that the school district, WPIAL and PIAA are responsible for his client not only sustaining a concussion in 2009 during practice but also for additional symptoms he claims it caused years later.

But in their own opening statements, attorneys for the district and the governing bodies for Pennsylvania high school sports said that’s not the case.

The player, Shane Skillpa, who is now 29 and the plaintiff, never told his coach he was injured the day he and another player hit helmet-to-helmet in a drill.

He didn’t tell his parents. He didn’t tell the trainer, said attorney Andrew Kimball, who represents the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League and the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association.

“If nobody else knew, how are we supposed to know there was a concussion that day?” Kimball asked the jury.

Skillpa filed a lawsuit against the defendants in 2017 alleging negligence, breach of implied contract and fraudulent nondisclosure.

He is seeking more than $5 million in total damages, alleging that he must work reduced hours as a nurse because of his symptoms; that he has difficulty with short-term memory and has a shortened life expectancy because of the concussion he suffered.

Skillpa, 29, testified Thursday that he was injured during a drill on Aug. 24, 2009, when he was entering his sophomore year.

He said that the mask on his helmet broke, and he felt dizzy.

“The coach told me my bell had just been rung,” Skillpa said. “He made it sound like it’s something that just happens.”

Skillpa got a new helmet and returned to practice — and continued to practice for a couple more days.

At the time, Skillpa said, he attributed his symptoms to heat, dehydration and the strenuous nature of football camp.

“I didn’t know I was injured,” Skillpa said.”There was, generally, a culture of toughness not to express things like that.”

It wasn’t until the morning of Aug. 29, 2009, that Skillpa’s mother noticed he didn’t look well.

He saw a concussion specialist two days later and began treatment.

Although he was cleared by his doctor in February 2011, Skillpa said he began experiencing new symptoms years later.

In 2016, he was diagnosed with new and distinct traumatic brain injuries triggered by the initial concussion, Skillpa’s attorney, Richard Sandow, said.

Those new symptoms — cognitive impairment, organic affective disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — prompted him to file suit.

But in his opening, Kimball questioned whether Skillpa’s symptoms even have anything to do with his initial concussion.

“Is this just who Shane is?” he asked.

Kimball said that millions of people who never had a concussion have anxiety, depression and ADD/ADHD.

“You have to look at his history to see where these things may have come from,” Kimball said. “Shane is normal. His symptoms can be explained without reference to his concussion.

“Whatever Shane’s problems may be, they’re not a result of anything our client did or did not do.”

On cross-examination, Kimball showed Skillpa and the jury the baseline ImPACT concussion test Skillpa took a year before he was injured.

On that test, Skillpa, who said he took the baseline test at home by himself, noted at the time that he’d had symptoms of fatigue, sadness, light sensitivity, nervousness, difficulty remembering, visual problems and feeling more emotional.

His total score on the baseline test, the document showed, was higher than after he sustained the concussion.

“I was 15 at the time,” Skillpa said. “I was unsupervised. I could have been sad at the moment.”

Kimball noted that Skillpa graduated from high school and then went on to graduate from Slippery Rock University. Although he started out majoring in computer science, his attorney told the jury, Skillpa found he could not look at a computer screen for extended periods of time.

He went back to school to become a nurse, and spent several months working in Florida during the covid-19 pandemic.

However, Sandow told the jury that Skillpa has to work reduced hours and must make significant accommodations in his work to make up for his lack of short-term memory and cognitive problems.

A doctor has speculated that Skillpa will no longer be able to be a nurse in five years or so because of his symptoms, Sandow said.

He told the jury in his opening statement that his client will be on psychiatric medications for the rest of his life.

“This case is not about the game of football, but it is about keeping our children safe,” Sandow said.

WPIAL and PIAA, Sandow said, have a duty to keep student athletes safe, including by ensuring that concussion protocols — including removing a potentially concussed student from play and requiring medical clearance before returning — are followed.

“They didn’t do that,” he said.

But Kimball told the jury that PIAA is a charitable, non-profit organization with 1,450 member schools and as many as 350,000 students in 32 sports.

It would be impossible, he said, for the agency to police every practice and game.

Instead, PIAA and WPIAL rely on high school principals to make sure proper procedures are followed.

Attorney Joseph Luvara, who represents the school district, told the jury in his opening that West Mifflin had installed brand new, state-of-the-art FieldTurf the year before Skillpa was injured and that it was installed and functioned the way it was supposed to.

He questioned how the district could be held liable in a case like this, given that after Skillpa was hurt, neither the coaches nor trainer knew.

“He didn’t report the injury,” Luvara said. “It’s incumbent upon a player to report an injury.”

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