Eric Chapman leans back in his recliner, flanked by an oversized, cardboard Guinness bottle and an inflatable Miller Lite can. His eyes glazed as they sweep past the glowing television screen.

The Buffalo Bills are playing the Detroit Lions on this Sunday afternoon. Chapman, from Wallingford, Pa., likes the Bills — at least when the Philadelphia Eagles aren’t on. But today, his eyes can’t focus on the game. No part of Chapman is focused on the NFL. His mind is 570 miles away.

Chapman’s thinking about his Syracuse men’s soccer teammates, who are on their way to a 1-0 loss to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. The loss will help keep Syracuse out of the Big East tournament, ending the Orangemen’s season much earlier than they’d anticipated.

Chapman’s senior year, though, ended more than a month earlier than expected. On Sept. 21, in a 3-1 loss to Seton Hall, two blows to Chapman’s head ended his career.

“It’s daunting,” Chapman said. “I’d come back, and there’d be no coherence to my thoughts. Everything I did would give me a headache.”

***

Chapman’s South Campus apartment is empty now.

His roommates, forward Kirk Johnson and midfielder Matt Morgan, are with the Orangemen. There’s no Phish or Grateful Dead streaming from Johnson’s messy room. Morgan’s gone, too. Of course, Morgan, the ‘clean freak’ of the group, locked his door.

All of Chapman’s teammates are gone. From the freshmen — whom Johnson invited over at the beginning of the year — to the seniors, whom Chapman arrived with four years ago. All that remains are empty bowls from previous pasta parties and an emptier apartment.

Chapman knows he should be gone, too. Gone to Virginia Tech and out of his apartment.

After all, he’s always been the reliable one.

‘He’s been an iron man for us,’ head coach Dean Foti said.

Chapman started for the Orangemen the past three seasons. Last year, he moved to sweeper, covering for injured Chris Aloisi and playing a position that made him squirm with discomfort.

Chapman voiced the players’ desire to play in front of senior keeper Anthony Peters rather than the inexperienced freshmen duo of David Rabazzi and Rich Scheer. For seven games this year, Chapman shadowed each opposing squad’s best player.

But that changed at Seton Hall, when a pair of incidents ended his reliability.

First, Chapman cracked heads with a Seton Hall attacker. The two went for a head ball and Chapman drew his head back and snapped it forward. The ball was gone, and Chapman smashed his head into the back of his opponent’s.

Minutes later, Pirates goaltender Alex McDonald blasted a punt 70 yards. Chapman squatted under it and the ball connected squarely with his woozy noggin.

The next weekend, when the Orangemen visited Providence, Chapman visited a neurologist at home in Wallingford. The doctor informed Chapman he’d suffered two concussions in a five-minute span. If he was hit again, Chapman could have ended up like former NFL quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The lightest jostle could cause another concussion.

‘When he said that I was like, ‘Jesus’. It’s an abrupt way to end my senior year. It’s a change of pace to be doing this,’ Chapman said, pointing at the TV and the forest green upholstered recliner.

Still, Chapman wasn’t ready to call his career quits. He waffled for weeks on whether to return.

‘For a long time I thought about playing anyway,’ Chapman said. ‘It wasn’t even a question of was it worth it. If I could have I would have. But it was about safety.’

He’d worked his whole career for his senior year. He’d decorated his front door with a men’s soccer poster. He’d placed an SU soccer sticker on a stereo in the corner of his living room. Old soccer newspaper articles graced the apartment walls.

Three days after Chapman saw the neurologist, he sat out against Villanova. The defense struggled, allowing three goals on the Wildcats’ only three good opportunities.

Each time the ball tickled the SU netting, Chapman’s headache worsened. He thought about Syracuse’s three other seniors, Ryan Hall, Kevin Boyle and Guido Cristofori. Chapman realized that, with him in the stands, his team was sentenced to another mediocre year.

‘Every time Villanova would score in some way I’d feel like that was my fault, because I wasn’t on the field,’ Chapman said. ‘There was nothing I could do to help the team. I’m letting those three seniors down.’

Chapman’s sustained concussions before. By his count, he’d been diagnosed with a pair and had been knocked woozy on a few occasions. The Seton Hall concussion, though, was different. Usually, the fuzzy feeling went away after three or four days. This time, it lasted 11.

‘I think it happens a little more than people realize,’ Johnson said. ‘There’s a lot of ways you can get concussions playing soccer.’

***

For so long, Chapman’s head was always clear.

Chapman earned a Lockerbie Scholarship in 2002, an honor establishing him as one of the 35 best students his class. Now, he’s taking a graduate-level course and writing his honors thesis on the relationship between James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. He said he can read between 100 and 150 pages an hour.

But for the 11 days after the hit, Chapman couldn’t string two paragraphs together. He’d read 25 pages in 45 minutes and wouldn’t remember a word. Looking at the crossword puzzle in each morning’s paper, which normally took two minutes, gave him a headache. Going to practice or to class brought instant pain.

Teammates said he doesn’t sleep. Chapman said he wakes up at 6:15 a.m. most weekdays to peruse The New York Times.

‘He’s always at the library,’ Boyle said. ‘Every time you drive by, there’s his car outside.’

Weekends bring only a brief respite — his alarm goes off at 9. Chapman goes to the library and studies either for his classes or his Graduate Record Exam, which he moved from December to November after the injury.

‘I have all this extra time to study, so I figure why not?’ Chapman said. ‘Being up for more of the day to think about it doesn’t help. I’ve never been a big sleeper.’

Apparently not.

“Even when he was little, we’d put him in his crib and he’d come bouncing right out,” Chapman’s father, Jack, said. “He never was one for lying down.”

But after the concussion, Chapman stayed in his room, shutting the curtains and blocking sunlight. Going outside, concentrating or thinking all brought the headaches back.

‘The only time I made any sense,” Chapman said, “was when I’d lay down.’

He discussed his condition with Hall, who has suffered five concussions. He talked with Rogan Kersh (his political science advisor), Foti and former teammate Darren Ingles, who’s living in London.

Some people, whom Chapman wouldn’t name, encouraged him to come back despite possible future concussions.

And finally, Chapman decided to give up.

‘I just told him that there’s more to life than soccer,’ Hall said. ‘He had to do what’s best for him.’

‘I told him to do what’s best for him,’ Foti said. ‘I’m no doctor. It was up to him, his parents and his doctors to decide.’

Chapman’s teammates insist he remained part of the team. He shagged balls at practice and retrieved equipment for forgetful teammates.

‘He’s been a little down,’ Johnson said last week. ‘But he’s still there with us. He hasn’t given up.’

But that made it no easier. It wasn’t the same. Hours at the library can only occupy a person for so long. On weekends, when Chapman watches the Bills and Eagles and not the Orangemen, he becomes depressed.

Even now with the season over, Chapman misses soccer nearly every weekend. When he fills himself with pity and pain, he returns to his room, flips on his computer and inserts a CD slideshow with pictures from a Spring Break trip to California.

Chapman calls the trip the best week of his life. It instilled in him a hope to go to graduate school at California-Berkeley. Chapman cruised Rodeo Drive and flexed on Muscle Beach with his best friend, Jeff Berman.

‘It might sound weird,’ Chapman said, ‘but I (look at those photos) a lot on weekends. It relieves a lot of the pain from not playing.’

The pictures take him away — miles away from soccer and the empty apartment. And most importantly, miles away from the sidelines, where he’d watch the end of his senior year fade quicker than a California sunset.

Published on November 6, 2002 at 12:00 pm