As the headaches continued on and on, the painful realization that Jacob Lacaden’s football career was over became more and more clear.

The Nevada junior linebacker, a 2014 Saint Louis graduate and Honolulu Star-Advertiser All-State first-teamer as a senior, was forced to medically retire from football. He made the announcement public on Twitter on Jan. 24.

Lacaden said he suffered two major concussions in college. The first was in a game against Utah State as a redshirt freshman. He suffered the blow early in the game but played the entire four quarters before missing the rest of the season.

Last year, Lacaden played in eight games before suffering another concussion in October against Wyoming.

This time, the headaches persisted through the end of the year, over winter break, and again returning to campus in January.

Lacaden said the decision was made when the doctors changed the language they used when treating his repeated head injuries.

“This time around it wouldn’t be focusing on recovering if I got another one, but how we were going to prepare you for disabilities for your future,” Lacaden said. “The whole process was eye-opening and something I never imagined.

“I did CAT scans, I did MRIs, I did a number of things just to get back to working out with my teammates, and you go through all of that and you suddenly realize just how serious it is.”

Lacaden comes from generations of football players. His uncle Ernesto, the brother of his grandfather, was a consensus first-team All-State linebacker at Waianae in 1978. His father, Frank, was named a first-team All-State defensive lineman by the Honolulu Advertiser in 1985.

Jacob Lacaden made the Honolulu Star-Advertiser All-State first team as a senior safety in 2013 before heading to Nevada to play for the Wolf Pack.

Some of his toughest moments dealing with his impending retirement from football came telling his family. The game has meant so much to all three generations.

“They always pushed me to play ball and get to the next level and do all of those things,” Lacaden said. “That was the one thing that kind of made me teary-eyed. It was really hard to sit down on the phone and talk to my dad, and he told me it’s a rough thing but it takes an even tougher man to walk away from it.”

Lacaden had a reputation as one of the hardest hitters in Hawaii during high school and it continued at Nevada.

When he was diagnosed with his first concussion, it struck him that he had felt the same way during high school while playing football.

Surrounded by training staff and professionals, he quickly realized it was something he has dealt with on multiple occasions in his life.

“What we don’t know growing up is we get our bell rung and you get that dazed feeling, but you don’t know that it might be a concussion,” Lacaden said. “You stay in the game, you keep playing, but you keep taking hits and eventually you’re not all there.”

There’s no question the sport has changed over the past decade. Coaches, players and administrations are all much more aware of the seriousness of head injuries players suffer.

Lacaden said he’s in the middle of two generations that have a fundamentally different view of how the game is played.

“We’re like stuck in between,” he said. “We grew up between the ages where you hit, hit, hit until you feel it and now we’re transitioning to an era of football where we understand how dangerous it is. We block differently, we take on blocks differently, we tackle differently. Coaches do a really good job of letting it be known if you take one good hit you have to come out of the game because your future is at stake.”

Lacaden also knows what it’s like to be a high school kid playing football. If someone came up to him when he was 16 years old and said he needed to come out of a game if he got hit hard, he certainly wouldn’t have listened.

He understands the mind-set, but he also wants to be an example for future football players from the islands to stay safe.

“We’re hard-headed and I can’t tell someone who is passionate about football, especially at a young age, to get out of a game,” Lacaden said. “But I feel like it is the safest thing to do. Do get checked up if you’re not feeling right, do talk to someone if you’re feeling a bit fuzzy. There’s no shame in it. We’re all tough and we all want to play football for as long as we can, so be safe about it.”