The next steps

Chris Norton never had to think about the next time he would walk until a fateful football game in 2010. The Iowa native’s collegiate football career ended five games after it started.

He suited up as a freshman special teams player for Luther College in the fifth game of the season against Central College. The first two-and-a-half quarters were normal for Norton. He made two tackles for the Norse. But he went for a tackle on a kickoff return midway through the third quarter and his head awkwardly hit the ball carrier’s knee, fracturing his C3 and C4 vertebrae. He lay motionless on the field inside Carlson Stadium in Decorah, Iowa.

Up north in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Eric LeGrand — a junior for Rutgers at the time — also made a tackle on a kickoff return. The defensive tackle remained still on the ground after the fourth-quarter hit and was later carted off the field at MetLife Stadium.

About 1,069 miles separate Decorah and East Rutherford, but two devastating injuries connected them on Oct. 16, 2010.

LeGrand also suffered a spinal cord injury at his C3 and C4 vertebrae. Doctors weren’t optimistic about his recovery.

“Things didn’t look good in the beginning,” LeGrand said. “Doctors told me I would never walk again, never eat solid foods, never breathe on my own.”

Back in Iowa, Norton was transported to Decorah Medical Center and later airlifted for 72 miles to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where surgeons tried for three hours to repair his fractured neck and severely compressed spine.

Doctors told Norton he had a three percent chance regaining movement below his neck.

Three percent was all he needed to move on. He didn’t believe the number, but he believed in his commitment to physical therapy and his determination to return to school and walk across the stage for graduation one day.

“I didn’t want to accept what the doctors told me,” Norton said. “I just rejected it, there was just no way.”

Norton never sulked. He started rehabilitation a day after the injury, slowly regaining movement in his hands and arms. The goal to walk again never left his mind.

But Norton had to adjust to a new life. When Saturdays rolled around and Norton’s teammates prepared for games, it was hard for him to accept that he couldn’t join them on the field.

“You kind of go through an identity crisis,” Norton said. “I wasn’t a D1 athlete or a professional athlete, but I still grew up playing sports and had an identity as an athlete. I was competitive and it was something I loved to do and wanted to do, so for it to end abruptly, you definitely have an identity crisis. It’s like, ‘Who are you now?’”

In high school, Norton was a 1,000-point scorer on the basketball team, an All-District football player and a track athlete, so it was hard to grasp the reality of life without sports.

“The in-between stage when you don’t really know your future, there’s uncertainty, you’re in a wheelchair,” Norton said. “There’s just so much uncertainty about how you add value to the world.”

There was a gap in Norton’s life that football used to fill. Physical pain often expands to emotional distress for athletes who suffer career-ending injuries.

“A lot of athletes will have that sense of loss,” said Dr. Troy Moles, a post-actual fellow at Premiere Sports Psychology in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Athletes recovering from career-ending injuries often struggle with figuring out what to with their time because activities such as morning workouts and afternoon practices are no longer on their schedules.

“They’re not sure exactly what to do with their time,” Moles said. “It can be a big blow to their emotional state just because of that loss of athletic identity. Because so much of their identity and so much of what they’ve worked on and been involved in for such a long period time has suddenly been ripped away from them and they’re often left with a gap in their lives.”

In his hometown of Avenel, New Jersey, LeGrand now spends most of his days broadcasting Rutgers football games, participating in college football podcasts and giving weekly motivational speeches. Nurses lift him from his bed to his wheelchair every morning and dress him. He goes to physical therapy every Tuesday and Thursday, but it bothers him that he can do little on his own. If he has an itch, he has to rely on his mom or one of his nurses to scratch it.

“You go from being a football player and an athlete your whole life with people looking up to you and wishing you well,” LeGrand said. “And now you’re normal. It’s crazy to say that, but it brings you back down to earth. Sometimes you don’t know how to handle it until you find something that you really love.”

LeGrand loved being in the spotlight on the football field. He enjoyed being a role model. Once known for his physical prowess, he was forced to channel his passion for sports in a different way. LeGrand never separated himself from football, he just had to figure out another way to be involved. Six months after his injury, LeGrand helped announce Rutgers’ spring football game.

“It’s an adjustment period,” LeGrand said. “It’s not easy, but you just have to find your niche or what makes you happy again. Your whole life has been around whatever your sport was, but there’s things in the real world that can make you happy as well.”

At Premiere Sports Psychology, Moles works with athletes to cope with injuries and help them move on with their lives.

“One of the biggest things for me is helping an athlete realize what aspects of sport he or she enjoyed and figuring out what it is they valued within sport,” Moles said. “Helping them take that and re-apply it in other areas of their life.”

Receiving a college diploma was always important for Norton and his family, so he shifted his focus to academics after his injury.

“Of course it was a tough transition,” Norton said. “You want to be on the field, you want to do physical activities, but I had to learn to adapt and find other things to care about and appreciate.”

Months of physical therapy led to Norton’s return to Luther College in the fall of 2011, a year after the injury. He went to classes in his wheelchair, determined to fulfill a degree in business management.

The process of returning to school wasn’t easy. It was difficult to go to campus in a wheelchair every day, it was emotionally taxing to realize he couldn’t hold a pencil. Raising his hand wasn’t an option.

“It was a difficult process because my fingers at the time didn’t work very well,” Norton said. “They still don’t work very well. I can’t hold a pencil very well.”

With help from Luther’s student academic support center, Norton worked with his professors to create a plan to make his education experience as easy as possible considering his physical limitations.

Instead of handouts in class, teachers emailed documents to him beforehand. For tests, professors sent him PDF files that he could mark answers with a stylus on his iPad.

“I worked with people to helped me coordinate all my classes and communicate with all of my professors at the end of class,” Norton said.

Norton couldn’t always keep up in class, but his classmates were always willing to send him notes. It took him twice as long to take tests and write papers, but he always got them done.

Norton set a goal to walk across the stage at his college graduation. And he accomplished it. With help from his fiancé, Emily Summers, Norton took his first steps in five years when he walked across the stage to accept his diploma from Luther in 2015.

He hopes his next major steps will be when he walks Summers down the aisle at their wedding, which is scheduled for spring of 2018.

LeGrand also returned to school to receive his diploma from Rutgers, noting it as the biggest accomplishment of his life to date. He took classes for three years before graduating in 2014.

“I Skyped into classes,” LeGrand said. “I was live in the classroom with them. It was definitely a process.”

LeGrand finished the final three years of his degree without ever holding a pencil in his hand.

“My biggest accomplishment I would say is going back to school and graduating,” LeGrand said. “If I can do it without even being able to write my name on a piece of paper, other people can do it as well.”

Norton and LeGrand are committed to inspiring others through motivational speaking and are both advocates for individuals with spinal cord injuries and disabilities.

“We got hurt on the same day, same play, around the same time in the game,” LeGrand said. “It’s so crazy. I met Chris one time when he came to New York and it was pretty awesome. To see what he’s doing now is pretty cool.”

This article was an assignment for J326F – Reporting Sports at the University of Texas.