Cougars QB feeling fortunate that his injury wasn’t worse

Published 11:29 pm Thursday, October 9, 2008

Gary Rogers says he’s lucky.

Three weeks ago he left Washington State’s Martin Stadium in an ambulance. Not long after, he was told that a fractured vertebra would end his Cougar football career.

Time to get down? Time to be angry at the world and wonder, “Why me?”

Nope.

Lucky.

That’s how the Kamiak High School graduate, who is currently walking around with a restrictive collar on his neck, describes himself these days.

Sure, he gets a little bummed sometimes when he considers that his college career ended before it ever really had a chance to get going, but all things considered, the 22-year-old is putting a remarkably positive spin on a tough situation. After all, he knows things could have turned out worse.

“I’m lucky to be walking and all of that,” said Rogers, who was home this week visiting family. “It’s unfortunate that I don’t get to play out the rest of my senior season. That’s what I worked for the whole time I was here, but I’m just going to battle back, that’s really all I can do. … I’ve just got to keep being positive. It’s tough, but that’s life.”

For four years, Rogers waited for his opportunity.

He spent his first four years at Washington State primarily on the bench. At times, fans called for a quarterback change, hoping to see what Rogers had to offer in place of Alex Brink. Two seasons ago, he came into a game at Auburn and led a six-play, 90-yard touchdown drive. Against Idaho that same season, he came into a game and led another impressive touchdown drive. A quarterback controversy was born.

But the quarterback change never happened, so Rogers kept waiting. This season, finally, was Rogers’ time to shine. In his final year at WSU, the 6-foot-7 quarterback was getting his chance to run the Cougars offense.

Sometimes, however, life just isn’t fair.

Rogers struggled along with the rest of Washington State’s offense, and by week four lost his starting job to Kevin Lopina. But when Lopina went down with a back injury in WSU’s Sept. 20 game against Portland State, Rogers was back in.

Early in the third quarter, however, Rogers took a hit from Portland State safety Aaron Dickson and didn’t get up.

“That’s the worst thing you can go through as a parent,” Rogers’s father, Gary, said. “Gary’s been hit pretty hard over the years. In that position he’s wide open to a hit. I’ve seen him go down and be slow to get up, but when he stayed down, I knew there was something wrong.”

After hitting the turf, Rogers knew something was wrong as well. He had been hit just after throwing a pass — the hit drew a flag, but Rogers said, “I don’t think it was that late, personally.”

“Right after I threw it, I just got hit on my right side and felt something pop,” he said. “When I was on the ground, I felt numbness in my arm and knew something was wrong with my neck, so I didn’t want to get up.”

Like everyone watching, Rogers initially feared the worse, but quickly felt a sense of relief when he was able to move his extremities.

“I was just really hoping I wasn’t hurt seriously,” he said. “I just did not want to be paralyzed, that was the fear that was in my head. Once I knew I could move my feet — I knew something was wrong — but I knew there wasn’t going to be any paralysis or anything like that, so that was a relief.”

Tests revealed that Rogers fractured his C7 vertebra and broke the transverse process — Rogers describes it as the little wing that hangs off of the spine — on that vertebra.

“It was heart wrenching to see him go down in that game,” Kamiak football coach Dan Mack said. “He was doing so well. He’s waited so long for this opportunity and he was doing such a fine job. Myself and all the people that root for him were just heartbroken. He’s such an awesome young man. He’s got a great disposition, he’s just a young man with great integrity and character.”

The good news is that the injury did not require surgery, and Rogers is expected to make a full recovery. And that great disposition Mack speaks of has kept Rogers from feeling sorry for himself.

In fact, he hasn’t even given up on football despite the scare. Rogers will keep wearing his neck brace for four more weeks, and Doctors have told him no contact sports for four months, but if everything goes according to plan, Rogers hopes to pursue a football career beyond college. He knows the odds are against him at this point, but he’s not ready to call it a career just yet.

“I get the go-ahead, I’ll try to keep playing,” he said. “I’ll do pro day to see where I stand and stuff. But once football’s over, the main thing is that I have my degree and that’s really important to me.”

Rogers is one credit away from his degree in sports management, and says he would one day love to work in the front office of a professional sports team.

And as for Dickson, the guy who delivered the season-ending hit, Rogers said there is no bitterness towards the Portland State safety.

“He sent me a message saying he was sorry and all of that stuff, and I told him, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s football,’” Rogers said. “Things happen like that, I totally don’t think the hit was blatant or anything like that, so there’s definitely no bad feelings or anything.”

So without anger toward the person that inflicted the injury, and without self pity about the freak accident that ended his college career, Rogers moves forward. As he puts it, it’s really all he can do at this point.

“I’m doing pretty good, just hanging in there,” he said. “It’s a tough situation to be in, but I’m just trying to make the best of it, and that’s really all I can do. I’m not going to get down too much. It is frustrating, especially with it being my senior year, but I’m just going to make the best of it.”

Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com.