The varsity football team earned their spot as district champions with a perfect 10-0 record, but success came with a few bumps and bruises along the way.
As he saw the team suffer twelve injuries throughout the entire season, trainer Fernando Escobar was reminded of how easily players can get hurt.
“The thing about these injuries is that they’re not from lack of training or conditioning,” he said. “Preparing for an impact injury is the luck of the draw that comes with the sport. It’s just football being football.
Though sometimes unavoidable, Escobar attempts to prevent injury by assisting players in taping ankles and bracing joints as well as stretching parts of the body.
“We do a lot of dynamic stretching,” he said. “Something that’s constantly moving such as high knees, lunges and butt kicks.”
Junior Eric Walker takes caution by following good nutrition rules of thumb and listening to his body.
“I drink a lot of water and make sure I don’t have a weird feeling in my stomach [before a game],” he said.
But even caution can only go so far; a number of athletes on the team suffered injuries that may prevent them from playing ever again.
“It’s always hard to tell a kid that their injuries are career-ending,” Escobar said.
Assisting him when the need arose, junior trainer Karley Reaves tried to keep the athletes out of discomfort.
“I don’t want them to be in pain,” she said.
The first injuries didn’t actually occur during the season, but during summer two-a-days, leaving Reaves feeling nervous about the upcoming games.
“It was kind of nerve-racking because the season hadn’t even started yet,” she said. “We wanted to get them healthy before the season started.”
Yet, as the season wore on, injuries continued to add up.
“It was disappointing because some of our really good players were out and they were mostly seniors,” she said. “They weren’t going to be able to play their senior year.”
Among the injured athletes, senior Colton Parker tore his meniscus and MCL during the Bridgeport rivalry game.
“I just made a tackle and I stood up and somebody got thrown into the side of my leg,” he said.
Unable to finish out the rest of the season due to his injury, Parker watched his teammates power through the remaining games and into the playoffs .
“[The worst part about getting hurt] is not being able to play and I miss out on everything,” he said.
Fellow player, senior Cole Selby broke his distal fibula and tore ligaments on the inside, the outside and on the top of his foot in the second game of the season against Gainseville.
“I was chasing down the ball carrier from the left side of the defense,” he said. “And whenever I went to tackle the ball carrier, our own player Chris Saunders got rolled into my ankle.”
Realizing the severity of his injury, Selby finished out the rest of the game on the sidelines.
“I just went to the bench and took off my pads and just watched the game pretty much,” he said.
He believes that so many injuries hindered the team from finishing strong in their last crucial game.
“I think that if we wouldn’t have had as many injuries, especially if Tyler Story and Colton Parker wouldn’t have gotten hurt that we would have done a lot better in the playoffs,” he said.
With so many injuries on the field, Escobar believes the pain simply made the team stronger.
“I think the injuries have driven us to be successful,” he said. “Many people ask why things like this happen or why we go through such things, but overcoming and being resilient makes the team stronger and surely provides us something to shoot for.”
