Usually by the end of October, Friday night football requires at least a hoodie. But by the third quarter of the L-S vs Ephrata game, I was still sporting my short sleeve Mounts t-shirt and of course my camera gear ready for the second half of the game. The players lined up for a kick-off and I started to walk down to the other end of the sideline to cover the Ephrata offense moving towards their end zone. Our trainer started to run to the visiting team’s sideline and I barely looked over, because players go down all the time. That’s football. They get cramps, stingers, and sometimes worse, but what caught my attention was that one of them said to a coach, “He’s out!. He’s not moving!” Now my son is on the kick-off return team and I must’ve counted the players coming off of the field a dozen times, I couldn’t find his jersey number on any of the helmets that were rushing in from the field. Again, I counted… I looked for #6. I walked closer to the players, that were all down on one knee and I looked around again…..no #6. My focus went to the player that was laying very still on the other side of the field as more and more rescue workers gathered around. There is no way that is my boy over there, I thought to myself. The players looked up at me as I approached and I asked them, “Is that Hunter out there?” All of them looked at me with these very worried eyes, “Yes, that’s Hunter.” My heart stopped. It really did. My walk became a little faster as I started across the field, and yes, I became the Mom instead of the photographer.
The paramedics and trainers finally got Hunter to talk and move, but he was in so much pain. The kind of screaming pain that makes you freeze in fear because you’re helpless and all of your worse fears run through your mind all at once. There was literally nothing I could do, but stand there and watch. My heart was beating out of my chest and the only thing I wanted to do was scream at the players of the other team, “Who hit my son! Who hit my son!” But what would that do? Who would that benefit? What would that solve? Absolutely nothing. Because unfortunately players get hurt. That’s football.
I’m a huge football fan. Every aspect of the game. To be truly honest, I love a good defense… big hits, smash mouth football. And in all the years that my son has played sports, in the back of my mind I knew this day could possibly come. The day where I am standing on a football field watching rescue workers work on my son, telling him NOT to move because they do not know what would happen to him if he did, and I can do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Fighting back the tears in front of this big group of men and players, I could hear every strap tighten around him on the stretcher preparing to go to the ambulance because we were headed to the trauma unit at LGH. And at that moment, COVID and whatever ambulance guidelines were in place was not stopping this mom from traveling with her player to the hospital. I was going!
Moments later we were on our way and I was shaking so bad that I had wished I had grabbed the hoodie in my backpack that I had brought to the game just in case the temperature dropped. Not even out of the stadium parking lot, my phone is blowing up with notifications…fives text messages, three Facebook messages, and a couple of Instagram direct messages. Who is trying to contact me? It was our football family! The moms of the other players, the dads of the players, the community…our community! It was crazy and so wonderful! The messages kept coming in all night and through the rest of the weekend sending prayers, thinking of Hunter and his family. We heard from the Warwick Athletic Director, our dentist, friends, the L-S Head Coach and the player that delivered the defensive hit, reached out to found out if he was okay. Say what you want about living in a small town, but these are the moments when you know just how important you are to others in your life and in your community. These are the moments when your small town community steps up and goes out of their way to help in any way they can. It was an amazing feeling and I am so very grateful to be a part of this small town.
Hunter’s scans came back all clear of breaks, fractures, etc., from head to toe. Thank the Lord!
On Saturday, we were chatting about the play and the hits from the visiting team. I expressed some disappointment about the other team and Hunter said, “Mom, that’s football.” I asked him if he is going to continue to play in the future, or if this scared him enough to walk away. My son answered, “I love football…the strategy, the players, the feel of the hit when you take down the quarterback, when you jump twice your height to make that completion. I love football. And getting rocked on a good clean defensive hit, is just part of the game. I love football. I don’t blame the player that delivered the hit, or the coaching staff. Because if I had the opportunity to make that play…I would do it in a heartbeat. That’s football mom.”
What I learned from my son … these are his sports, his coaches, his teammates and he understands what could happen and he is making that choice to play and be a part of something bigger than himself. What my job is, is to be a positive supporter for him and his team and the rest is out of my control. Football is his family right now. And he loves his Family. Because that’s football!
Go Mounts!
