Picture Provided by : Courtesy of Carter County Sports
A 16-year-old boy sits on the side of a dark road.
Blue and red lights flash in the distance as sirens wail through the night, drawing closer by the second.
But the boy doesn’t notice. Instead, all he sees is the limp body in his arms — a friend, knocked unconscious, from an accident they and two others just miraculously have survived.
More than a year later, that friend, having been removed from his medically-induced coma, accompanies the boy onto a football field.
Once they reach the field, though, it is no longer the friend in danger, but the boy.
For when the boy — now 17 — gazes through his face mask, his perspective is only halfway normal.
On the boy’s left, there is the typical view: teammates, coaches, opponents and a ball that whistles through the East Tennessee air.
But on his right, there is nothing but black: complete blindness from an infection incurred two weeks prior.
The boy can no longer recall the previous year’s wreck, which resulted in a severe concussion and several other injuries.
But a football-induced infection that now causes blindness in one eye? That, he’ll remember forever.
The pain. The taunts. The love. The grit. The fear. The hope.
Two mutually exclusive, future-twisting events. Countless lives changed forever. A postseason transplant set to restore the boy’s vision — and season — that have not been lost, but merely interrupted.
All experienced by one senior football player, who is willing to risk everything if it means a chance at one more snap.
This is the improbable, illogical, irresistible story of Tyler Thompson
