An early goodbye

Senior Matt Lopez is helped off the field by teammates Sterling Johnson, left, and Dominic Lucia, right.

     It’s Friday night, September 25 in Vacaville, California. The Granite Bay Grizzlies are taking on the Vacaville Bulldogs in a battle of Sac-Joaquin Section powerhouses. Grizzly senior defender Matt Lopez goes in to make a defensive stop and as a result, a pile of people are on top of him. He hears a rip, followed by excruciating pain. The Grizzlies won on the scoreboard that night, but they lost a key defensive anchor for the remainder of the season.

***
   That night, Lopez suffered a severe knee injury that will require extensive rehabilitation and a long nine months to allow for full recovery of his knee.
   However, his outlook is almost shockingly composed for being under such dismal circumstances. Injury and all, the toughest part of the entire ordeal was facing his teammates in the locker room.
   “At halftime I got carted into the locker room,” Lopez said. “I wasn’t even that upset about the injury, but I saw everyone walk in and they told me ‘we’ll miss you’ and ‘we’ll try to win the game for you’. That was the most choked up part (for me).”
    He said that after his teammates left, his knee started to hurt again, but for those few moments that he was with them, it really didn’t bother him.
   “It didn’t even really hurt (at that point) because you have so much adrenaline going,” Lopez said.
   Coach Ernie Cooper, the seasoned leader at the helm of the GBHS football team, remarked at how hard it is to see any player, especially one that has worked as hard as Lopez, to go down with a season-ending injury.
   Cooper said that any player that suffers that kind of trauma needs to be reassured about their accomplishments, because athletes often feel a sense of guilt, as if they let their team down by falling victim to injury.
   “You have to remind them of how hard they worked in the off season and that you (as a coach) were proud of that work,” Cooper said. “You need to let them know you appreciate all of the hard work they put in to get ready for the season. That was the first thing I told Matt (after his injury).”
   This season three GBHS senior football players, including Lopez, have gone down with injuries that have ended not only their respective seasons, but their playing careers in a Grizzly uniform.
   Cameron Jeter and Clay Sears also had the remainder of their season cut short due to injuries. Jeter severely broke a bone in his hand in which he had metal screws and plates inserted, while Sears broke his finger while attempting to make a catch.
   All of the athletes are in agreement that the support from family, friends and teammates has been instrumental with their emotional recovery, which Cooper calls the more challenging part to heal.
   “(My) family and friends help keep (my) mind off of it. They just keep (me) going,” Sears said.
   For all three of the athletes, the injuries remain fresh in their minds as they try to deal with such devastating conditions.
   “Psychologically, the first couple of weeks are the hardest,” Cooper said. “Their routines are all messed up, and (the affected athletes) tend to feel sorry for themselves.”
   However, Cooper does not characterize his players as being part of these kinds of athletes, especially in Lopez’s case.
   “(He) has worked hard to condition his body to be able to handle this kind of trauma,” Cooper said. “Youth are resilient and (physically) tend to recover quicker.”
   The emotional piece of the recovery process sometimes takes less time than the physical rehabilitation, but can take far more effort to heal.
   The players don’t feel sorry for themselves about their long road to recuperation, but instead long for the chance to join their fellow Grizzlies on the field for another chance.
   “Friday nights are the hardest, because it’s difficult knowing that you could be out there, helping the team,” Lopez said.
  The lasting consequences of the injury don’t bring the players down, either. Sears is the only one of the three to be able to walk away this fall without a second thought after some physical therapy.
   His fellow teammates are not quite as fortunate with their outlooks. Lopez, who sustained the most severe injury of the three, had surgery on his knee and is expecting to have to wait for about nine months for his knee to get back into its original condition.
   “It just messes up one year, but the injury still changed my perspective,” Lopez said.
   Jeter, who also had surgery to insert plates and screws, will have the metal in his hand and the lasting memories for the rest of his life. He acknowledged that although his finger will be functional again, it will never get back to its original state.
   Cooper is confident that all of these athletes can get back to 100 percent, emotionally and physically, as long as they want to.
   “It’s hard the first year,” Cooper said, “It’s a long road, but they will recover.”

Photo Credit: Katie Zingheim