Career Ending Injury

An athlete all my life, I began as a Junior Olympic swimmer. The notoriety this brought our swim club saved it from bankruptcy when they were bought out and the swim facilities renovated. With the beautiful new facilities came increased membership dues. My parents couldn’t afford it but had the hope the new owners would see the value brought by my efforts in the water that opened the door to increased enrollment in the club. It didn’t. No scholarships offered and swimming, my first love was dead.

I moved on to basketball. Throughout my elementary years I would play ever typical American sport, excelling at most, except baseball, I was afraid to stand in the batter’s box. All the cross training just prepared me further to emulate Magic Johnson, my favorite NBA star. By the time I made it to high school, I had won every award you could think of but missed the days of middle school Pop Warner tackle football.

I stopped playing tackle ball after 8th grade because I was tiny. I was 5’1” and 110 pounds soaking wet. Walking into the gym on a hot summer day, as a rising tenth grader, at a new private school, I watched as the football players crashed into each other, thinking, “I can do that.” By the end of that summer, the best thing in my life at that time happened. I hit a growth spurt. At the start of football hell week, I was 5’10” and close to 160 pounds. I guess I was a late bloomer. This was the true beginning to my football career.

I had a phenomenal high school career ending with Senior Athlete of the Year and a roster spot for a small Division 3 NCAA football program in the middle of Iowa. I think I could have played at a higher level but my high school coach told me later in life, he simply did not know anything about helping kids get to the college level. Incidentally, my Dad spent my senior year incarcerated. As a way for him to relive my moments of grandeur on the football field, an assistant coach made a highlight tape for him. My Mom used that to send to the small schools that sent postcard flyers to applicants inquiring about whether or not the applicant played any sports.

This got me three, paid-in-full visits to three small colleges. I decided on a school in Iowa where my life would change forever. The first year was amazing. It was our best season in terms of record. I was named Defensive Rookie of the Year for our team, awarded All-Conference honors, and named the college Freshman Athlete of the Year. I even destroyed the conference MVP in a game where I shattered his collar bone on a sideline collision. The future was promising, so was my social life.

My sophomore year was okay. I was again awarded All-Conference honors but we had an abysmal record by the end of the year. As we entered into junior year, partying took precedent and I relied on my talent, ignoring hard work and discipline. My performance took a big hit and it culminated in a moment of sheer disgust in my abilities.

We were up by a field goal and the team was driving in the final minute, looking to take the lead. In the red zone, they ran a play action pass play, I read it all the way, made a break on the ball and dropped the game winning interception. We stopped them on the next play and went on to win the game with a goal line stand. I was heartbroken. Those were the moments where I thrived but, on that day, I felt like a complete failure. I sat on the sidewalk along the path of the locker room crying my eyes out. No one understood and the coaches even seem disgusted of such a display of self over team. We had one the game but I was seeking pity for my personal performance.

In that moment, I decided things would change. The summer going into my senior year, I stayed in small town Iowa. Every morning I woke up to run and lift weights. I went to work at an inner city non-profit in Des Moines, to return back to the gym for more weight lifting and sprints. There were zero distractions, no parties, no women, and nothing but football and work in my life for three months.

At the start of training camp, I was 198 pounds of no neck muscle, running a 4.5 flat 40-yard dash, and bench pressing 335 pounds and hang cleaning 285 (not crazy numbers by today’s standards but 15 years ago I was the man in that moment). My coaches saw the work I put in and decided they were going to switch my position. I started as a Freshman at Safety. This year I was to play outside linebacker and wreak havoc on opposing quarterbacks. I couldn’t wait.

In our first game, our opponent recognized the three-year starting safety was now in a different position, noting that a Freshman was given the spot I vacated. They went straight at him and began to eat him alive through an air raid. By the second quarter my coach moved me back to safety. Sitting in a Cover 1, I read the outsider receiver run a post-corner. I made a break on the ball, running and jumping laterally to my right. Tipping the ball at its highest point, it floated behind me, as did the receiver. In an act against gravity, I tried to rotate my body against my direction, twisting back to the left. When I landed, my foot slipped and the inside of my ankle touched my groin. Yeah, let me say that again. The inside of my ankle touched my groin. I didn’t tear ligaments, they exploded.

I lay on the field with a mangled left leg. I blew my ACL, LCL, PCL, meniscus, IT Band, complete patella and shin dislocation. The only thing holding my leg together was MCL and skin. They snapped my leg back in place and I was shuttled in the security Jeep to the small-town hospital. By the time I arrived, my knee had swell to the size of a volleyball. The doctor couldn’t even attempt to test anything or provided a diagnosis. I would have to wait for the swelling to go down to know anything.  

My girlfriend, at the time, was by my side. I asked to use her cell phone to call home. My Mom answered in confused; she knew my game was still going on. It was too early for my call. In a shaky voice, I asked to speak to my Dad. “Hello?!?” “It’s over Dad!” I repeated this phrase while balling my eyes out, gasping for air, trying to avoid hyperventilating (even writing that sentence gave me a lump in my throat). His only response, “Shit!”

I’m not sure how the conversation ended but I picked my soul up off the ground and asked the doctor what was next. There was nothing he could do. The swelling was too great. I had the solution. “Give me a brace and some crutches. I am going back to the game.” There was no point staying in the hospital. There was nothing they could do until the swelling went down which could be days from now (little did I know; it would take close to a month). I attached a bulky brace to my left leg, adjusted the height of the crutches and made my way back to the field. I made it just in time. Standing in the back of the end zone, I raised my crutches in excitement as we scored the game winning touchdown. That was the last bit of cheer my soul would experience for quite some time.