Marckie Hayes, a wide smile on his face when he talks about football, stands on the sideline in his cardinal and black NIU Huskies gear.

Hayes watches the football team run play after play during a Tuesday practice under the setting sun. Unlike the other Huskies waiting in hopes their name will be called to toe the turf, Hayes knows he’ll never hear his name, and it’s something he’s willing to live with.

Hayes, a redshirt senior and former cornerback at NIU, didn’t walk away from the game he loved until after he suffered his third concussion — or, as he would say, his third diagnosed concussion. He was afraid of future health or medical problems and knew ending his playing career was the best move.

In simplest terms, a concussion is a bruise on a focused area of the brain, according to head athletic trainer Phil Voorhis. The most common issue resulting from concussions are headaches, confusion, nausea and sensitivity to light and noise. There’s still a lot unknown about the long-term effects of concussions.

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Growing up in Sycamore, Hayes had always been a huge NIU fan. He followed the team since he was a kid and always dreamed of playing for the Huskies. He took the first step when he laced up the cleats for the first time in fourth grade. Hayes’ dad was a football player at a small college, and Hayes always wanted to be like his dad. His dad had always put an emphasis on teaching him the proper way to tackle to avoid a head injury.

“I never really heard enough about [concussions] from the sense that I would understand what it was as a child growing up, but safety was always important,” Hayes said.

From high school, Hayes made his way to NIU and walked onto the team with only “some minor concussion issues in high school.” He suffered his first two collegiate concussions late in his redshirt freshman season in 2011. His first one came in preparation for the GoDaddy Bowl. Hayes was cleared and excited to play in the game. He was concussed two weeks later in the actual game.

“The first one I kind of blacked out for a second and came back through,” Hayes said. “The second one in the actual [GoDaddy] Bowl game, I don’t really remember the entire game at all or really a day or so [after].”

While Hayes had been concussed twice in less than one month, he still couldn’t convince himself to leave the game he loved. He returned and was ecstatic when he received a scholarship going into his redshirt sophomore year. He had zero concussions that season. Things were looking up.

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It would be Hayes’ third concussion that put an end to his football-playing career. He was concussed for the third — and final — time at NIU during the team’s first scrimmage of fall camp going into his redshirt junior year in 2013. He still remembers the night practice and “being excited for … the first live scrimmage of the fall camp,” and he still runs the play through his head from time to time.

“The offense was backed up,” Hayes said. “I just ran up to make a very routine play. It was a run play, sweep to the outside, and I got stiff armed, so I missed the tackle, unfortunately. I hit my head on the ground and then, just because I had a history with concussions, I like kind of knew something was off.”

Hayes finished out the drive, went over to see the trainers and was later diagnosed with his third concussion.

“The third one, I knew everything that was going on,” Hayes said. “Like I have a full memory of the situation, but for about two or three weeks later just the lingering of the effects, just headaches, just sensitivity to light, things that had never really lasted that long came back.”

Hayes went through the progression of passing a computerized neurocognitive test and then doing light aerobic exercise, jogging, sports-related play without contact and limited contact before being cleared to play. During his recovery, Hayes talked with his parents, the coaches and the training staff. But, it wasn’t until he returned to the field right before the start of the season he knew “right then and there” it was in his best interests to stop playing.

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Hayes had “an emotional meeting” with head coach Rod Carey, who was “more than supportive,” where he told the coach he knew his time playing was up.

“Concussions are a deal where you just have frank discussions about it,” Carey said. “He was at the point where he’d had so many and it’d taken him so long to recover that he knew, he knew that his playing career was over. And that was hard. That wasn’t something I was going to sit there and be gruff with. I mean, you got to be understanding. It’s a hard moment. So, we just talked, and at the end of it we both just came to the conclusion that no doubt it’s best for you not to play.”

Carey has seen players go down with injuries before but said it’s even harder to see someone give up the sport they love because of multiple injuries.

“It’s not good,” Carey said. “Especially because Marckie was poised to have a really good year last year and [had] put himself in a position with his work habits to go. To have that taken away — it’s not like death because death is something completely different — but there’s a big-time sense of loss. You got to find yourself a little bit, and that’s tough.”

Fellow cornerback Paris Logan said it was “real tough” to see a teammate like Hayes goes down so many times that it knocked him out of football.

“Marckie is a hard-working guy,” Logan said. “He does everything right, and he loves football. So, it’s just tough seeing a guy like that get something he loved taken away from him.”

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Carey helped Hayes, who was still on scholarship, secure a spot as a player-coach — although technically referred to as a Huskie intern — so he wouldn’t have to completely give up football.

“It’s been great for us,” Carey said. “I think it’s been good for him, too. And that’s kind of on purpose. You just don’t want to all of the sudden cut the cord and [say], ‘Here’s the real world.’ You want to keep him involved.”

Hayes helped out with the scout defense last season and the starting defense this year, doing whatever the coaching staff needs as long as it doesn’t interfere with classes.

He is “just continuing to be a leader as best I can because I would have been a redshirt senior this year, so if I was playing I’d be looked upon for leadership anyway,” Hayes said.

After playing with Hayes for a few seasons, Logan said it was strange to see Hayes on the sideline at first, but that’s not so anymore.

“It’s like he just never left,” Logan said. “He’s always like cheering us up, getting us the calls, just anything we need to get better for games he’s right there.”

Every day at practice, Hayes still feels like he “could throw a helmet and shoulder pads on and jump right back in there.” But, he said walking away was the right decision because he’s as physically healthy and mentally sharp now as he was “before all the concussions, if not better.”

Hayes will graduate in December with a degree in industrial and systems engineering with an emphasis in health systems. He’s enjoying his final go-around at NIU with the final game coming Dec. 23 against the Marshall Thundering Herd in the Boca Raton Bowl.

“Obviously, local kid. I’ve been here all the time,” Hayes said. “I bleed red and black. I always will. I’ll always try to do whatever I can to help this team and this program and this university.”