A surfing injury left her unable to talk. Now, this pro surfer is raising awareness of head injuries

At 23, surfer Becca Speak was on the precipice of more greatness. Then she sustained a serious head injury during a surf competition and was left unable to speak.

At 23, only a few years into her professional surfing career, Becca Speak was sponsored by brands including Billabong, entering competitions and performing at the top of her game. She was enjoying her life and had lots to look forward to. But in an instant, she says, the sport that had given her life so much meaning “took so much away from me” when she sustained a serious head injury during a surf competition and was left unable to speak. “As soon as I hit my head, I went paralyzed for a moment,” Speak told CNN Sport of the accident, which took place in a concrete wave pool. “I didn’t really know what was happening. I just knew I couldn’t move my body, and I remember just being under the water, like, just crying, ‘please, please, please’ … not quite sure what’s happening, but I just knew I couldn’t move, and it was really scary.” Dragged from the water by friends who were watching her compete, Speak wasn’t sure whether something was seriously wrong but went to the hospital as the injury had left her bleeding. On the way, she started to experience delays with her speech. “It felt like the connection from my brain to my mouth wasn’t quite there,” she adds, but she returned home after hospital scans showed that “everything looked okay structurally.”