As long as the sport of football has been around, injuries have plagued the game. From bruised ribs to torn ligaments, the injuries range in severity and some can even keep players out for the entire season. This happened to multiple FHC JV football players this season, leaving the team without some of the key players it needed.
Sophomore Henry McNamara was lost to a torn meniscus before the season even began, leaving his playing time shorthanded from the jump. For McNamara, watching on the sideline left a lot to be desired.
“It sucked,” McNamara said. “It was very unfortunate. I had high expectations to get a lot of playing time due to how many people we had on the team and our positional strengths. I was expecting to play a lot. Being told I couldn’t play football was very unfortunate, and this was my first year to actually start. I wanted to build confidence before becoming a varsity player, and being hurt did not help at all.”
Sophomore Ian Paciorek took just as hard of a fall, tearing his ACL in the early stages of the regular season. A starting defensive back and receiver when healthy, Paciorek just wanted to be out there for the team and his friends.
“It was hard [to miss time],” Paciorek said. “It was hard because I knew I couldn’t be out there playing with my friends that I’ve grown up playing the sport with.
When players go down with an injury, the coaching has to adjust just as well as the team. There are new spots to fill, different strengths to plan around, and missing leaders. Head coach Anthony Sultini recognizes what had to change with the adversity.
“You look at the talent on the field with those guys,” Sultini said. “But you also have to look at the leadership, too. Henry McNamara is a fantastic leader. Everyone just naturally gravitates to him. You also lose the talent and the versatility. We were playing him at receiver and fullback, too since we were sparse in that position. There’s a lot of different pre-planning that has to happen since we would have to rotate guys around if there was another injury.”
On and off the field, the team lost some impact performers, and that left some spots and talent depleted on the depth chart. Sultini knows how much of a loss the big injuries were.
“Ian Paciorek was one of our top receivers,” Sultini said. “We only had 18 guys at the start of the year and we finished with only 14. We lost some speed there and we lost some really good hands. Henry’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades, and I’m only speaking from the offensive perspective. Coach [Jared] Ropp would probably say the same thing on defense since he knows the depth chart better than I do. With a team that only has 18, those guys are playing both ways. It also puts a strain on not only the guys that we lost but the guys that remain, because they have to catch up and make up for what we lost.”
When players go down to injury, they usually look for a silver lining in order to have a positive outlook on the injury. Paciorek contributed to this ideology.
“It motivated me,” Paciorek said. “Being out has given me a lot of motivation to come back next year better and stronger than I already was.”
Having a positive outlook and everything is what’s best for an injured player. McNamara embodies this positivity and resiliency.
“I felt like I learned a lot from the sideline,” McNamara said. “I wasn’t worrying about one thing and I learned a lot more about other aspects of the game, wondering what would happen if I changed something rather than worry about doing the same thing every time. I think that helps a lot when I need to learn a lot of complex things on varsity next year. It helped me grow as a player going forward.”
