The Sideline Podcast With Ryan Sutton

Rowan's Law Day only comes once a year. But for the people inside Lakefield College School, the conversation about concussion safety never really stops.

For this special live episode, recorded on September 30th at LCS, Ryan Sutton and Emma Pownall sat down with four guests who each experience concussions from a completely different angle. Canadian Olympic bronze medallist Hannah Darling opened up about the major concussion that nearly derailed her rugby career at 17, what isolation feels like when you're thousands of kilometres from home, and the small gesture from a classmate that helped her through it. Student athlete Nathan R., shared what it was actually like to get knocked out on the rugby pitch last spring, spend a month recovering during exam season, and return to sport still carrying a little fear.

Coach Adam Jansen talked through what it means to wear every hat at once on the sideline. And Athletics Director, Adam Ross and Janice Runza (Registered Nurse, Health and Wellbeing, Advisor) broke down the system LCS has built to bring students back safely, and why having one dedicated person quarterback that process makes all the difference.

Four perspectives. One conversation. All of it pointing to the same thing — concussion safety works when everyone plays their part.

Tash Lagacé has been on both ends of a concussion. In grade nine, she made a massive tackle in a rugby tournament, lost consciousness on the field, and was back playing within 30 minutes. Nobody pulled her. Nobody really knew to.

Now she's the athletic therapist for the Peterborough Petes and the Peterborough Lakers.

In this episode, Tash and Ryan talk through her personal concussion history, what it actually looks like to manage recovery for high-performance athletes under pressure, and why no two concussions ever follow the same path. They get into the fear of re-injury, how draft years and contracts add stress to an already difficult process, and the small wins that matter most when an athlete can't see their own progress.

She also makes the case for the most underrated person in the building — and it's not who you'd expect.

Emma Pownall has sustained three diagnosed concussions. The one that changed everything happened at 18, at a ski racing training camp in Collingwood. Two weeks later, still symptomatic, she got on a plane to Switzerland anyway — and spent the next three weeks on dry land while her teammates trained on snow.

She didn't tell her doctor the truth. She didn't tell her coaches either. That's the athlete brain, and it's something she and Ryan know well.

Now an educator and researcher with PACA, Emma works with students and athletes across the Peterborough community — helping them do what she couldn't at the time: speak up, slow down, and actually understand what's happening to their brain.

In this first episode, Emma and Ryan talk through her story, the fear of re-injury that still follows her, the small wins that mark real recovery, and why changing the culture around reporting matters more than any single intervention.

It's an honest conversation from two people who've lived it.