Jared's Updates
Jared Coppola’s Updates
The Boston Globe
April 29, 2010
Courage runs in their family
Sports injuries can’t keep triplets down
By Sapna Pathak
RANDOLPH — His compelling story was shared, and when his name was announced, Jared Coppola received a standing ovation at Lantana’s, the function room filled with high school football coaches, players, friends, and family.
The dry eyes disappeared on Sunday night when Coppola lifted his right arm, gripped his courageous player award from the Massachusetts High School Football Coaches Association at their annual Hall of Fame dinner, and rested the plaque on his lap. The ability to move his own arm and control his fingers required four months of rehabilitation, but is just one of many strides the North Reading teen has taken since his life was dramatically altered last fall.
On Sept. 4, Coppola, a junior at St. John’s Prep in Danvers, arrived at varsity football practice and dressed for a scrimmage in Lynn and loaded onto the bus with the rest of his teammates, including his brothers, Tyler and Brandon. The ride was like any other: jokes and laughter and predictions about the upcoming season. The triplets sat near one another, as always, chatting about what they wanted for dinner that night.
Jared Coppola finally returned home for that dinner four months later. On that September evening, with his parents, Skip and Dawn, watching from the stands, Coppola suffered a severe spinal cord injury to one of his vertebrae after making a tackle on a Lynn English receiver. He was paralyzed from the shoulders down.
The injury came less than a year after Brandon Coppola cracked the same vertebra in a junior varsity scrimmage. His damage was not as severe; no surgery was required, there was no nerve damage or paralysis. He underwent months of physical therapy and was forced to give up football. But he plays on the varsity baseball team at Prep. Tyler Coppola continues to play football.
All three Coppola brothers received the Paul Costello Courageous Player Award on Sunday night, the first time the coaches association has honored a non-senior. Erik Ciocca of Masconomet Regional and Sam Frey of Wakefield were among the seven senior recipients from Eastern Massachusetts.
“It was a no-brainer,’’ said Costello, a former coach at Boston Latin and current treasurer of the coaches’ association. “The Coppola family took a very bad situation and turned it into a pretty inspirational story. There was no way that they wouldn’t receive this award.’’ Dawn Coppola was also honored with an award to celebrate and recognize her strength and resiliency after watching two of her three triplets suffer such devastating injuries.
“The award was definitely for the entire family, because of the trauma they suffered two years in a row and to see how they’ve persevered through it,’’ said St. John’s head football coach Jim O’Leary. “Brandon is back to sports, but can never play football again. Jared was paralyzed and is reworking his entire body to learn how to use his arms and walk again.’’
On Sept. 22, after a couple weeks at Children’s Hospital Boston, Jared was flown to the Shepherd Center, a spinal cord and brain injury research and rehabilitation center in Atlanta. On Dec. 18, he returned home, which, through the kindness of community volunteers, had been renovated to be more accessible.
Jared arrived in Atlanta with no movement below his shoulders and no idea whether that would ever change; he now has full movement of his arms, hands, and torso. He left Boston after being told he would not stand or walk again; he now spends about 20 minutes during each session building strength and endurance out of his wheelchair and using a walker.
The progress, however, is not enough to satisfy Jared, a competitor to his very core. “I’ve come a long way, but I’ve also got a long way to go. It’s your attitude that helps you through it,’’ said the 17-year-old. “I think about the fun times [before the injury] and that helps keep me motivated. I’m taking steps again, my right leg’s really good but my left side is weaker so we’re working on that. I’ll get there. I already told coach he’s going to see me standing on the sidelines soon.’’
For O’Leary, who’s coached football for almost 40 years, visiting Atlanta to see Jared only reaffirmed what he already knew. “Jared’s always smiling, he is always positive. He would play football with a smile, and now he’s in rehab smiling his way through it. [At Sunday’s banquet] he told me he’s coming back and calling the offense. I told him he’s calling the defense. There’s no way he’s not going to be a part of this team, and he’s just thinking of this like an offseason, and he’s got to do what he has to do to get back to his team.’’
In Atlanta, Jared spent five days a week in physical therapy, starting his days at 7:30 a.m. and ending them around 4 p.m. Saturdays featured an hour each of physical therapy and recreational therapy and 90 minutes of occupational therapy. Sundays were spent keeping up with homework and assignments sent by his St. John’s teachers each week. Now, he spends three days a week, plus weekends, at Northeast Rehab, in Salem, N.H. He goes to school for a few hours each day. This summer, Jared plans on returning to Atlanta for a walking clinic and more rehabilitation.
In the fall, his sights are set on taking the field for the football season opener. “Brandon will be there on the sidelines, Tyler will be playing, and our parents will be in the stands,’’ said Jared. “I plan on being there on the sidelines too. This is my team, my sport. My teammates are my family. I don’t regret playing football because it’s just a part of who I am. We’re a football family. It’s in my blood. I’m determined to get back to the field, and I will.’’
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
February 11, 2010
SalemNews.Com
Determined To Walk Once More
For the first time, St. John's Prep football player Jared Coppola talks about the injury that felled him — and how he's working hard to get his life back
By Mike Uva, Special to the Salem News
Editor's note: Mike Uva, a senior at St. John's Prep from Peabody, is a football teammate and close friend of Jared Coppola. Coppola spoke with Uva and, for the first time since his spinal injury five months ago, shared his thoughts with the public on what happened that day, how his rehabilitation has gone and how it feels to be back home and back in school.
September 4, 2009. It was just another day of Massachusetts high school football as St. Johns Prep headed to Manning Field in Lynn for a preseason game vs. Lynn English. After an offensive series from both teams, it seemed as if it was going to be just another ordinary scrimmage. Yet when the Prep defense took the field for their second series, one of the most horrific injuries in Massachusetts schoolboy football history occurred.
"I was playing cornerback and the (Lynn English) wide receiver ran a short stop route," explained 17-year-old Jared Coppola, reliving the play that changed his life with the public for the first time. "As he went up for the ball I hit him — and the next thing I knew I was lying on my back and not able to get up." As he lay on the ground after the play, one of Coppola's teammates — knowing how tough Jared is — knew something was wrong. "When I went over to him, I was like, 'What are you doing? Get up'," said senior linebacker George Sessoms. "But he just stared at me and said 'I can't.' I could tell by the look in his eye that something was wrong."I'll never forget that look. I immediately told people to get the trainer over because something was wrong and Jared couldn't move."
As team doctors from both teams rushed the field along with Eagles head coach Jim O'Leary, players and spectators could only look on and hope for the best. At the time, no one knew what exactly Jared had injured. "I fractured my fifth cervical vertebrate (C5) in my neck, which resulted in losing all movement from my chest down," Jared said.
He was then immediately rushed to Children's Hospital Boston where the junior was comforted by his parents, Dawn and Skip, as they stood by his bedside along with his triplet brothers, Brandon and Tyler. His older brother Derek and sister Brittany were away at college at the time and would receive the news later that night.
"I was in my dorm the night before the first football game of the season (for the University of New Hampshire) when I got a call from my mom saying Jared had been hurt in a scrimmage," said Derek Coppola. "I was shocked to hear that he hurt his C5 in his neck because Brandon had fractured the same vertebrate less than a year ago in a game."
Successful surgery
Later that night, myself along with coaches Jim O'Leary and Paul Uva were able to see Jared at the hospital. When I went over to him tears began to fill my eyes, knowing all the hard work he had put in for the upcoming season. I tried to stay strong to show Jared that everything was going to be all right. The first thing he said to me was, "So did we win the game?" He was unaware that the game had been stopped after his injury because players from both teams were not in the right mindset after seeing what took place. I knew I couldn't explain that to him, so I simply said "Yes Jared; we won" (which brought a quick smile to his face for a couple seconds.)
Later that night, Jared went into surgery.
"It was the first time I had ever broke anything, so I was a little nervous," he admitted. "But at the same time, I felt that I was in good hands with Dr. Snyder and Dr. Proctor performing the surgery." It took nearly eight hours, but the surgery was a success."They fused my fourth, fifth and sixth cervical vertebrates together in order to stabilize my fifth (C5)," Jared explained.
Jared spent the next several weeks at Children's Hospital Boston before being flown to The Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Ga. The facility, Jared said, is considered to be one of the best spinal cord rehabilitation centers across the country for adolescents. "That's why it was so important to try to get me down there, because it's what they specialize in," he said.
Overwhelming generosity
Jared began his first process of recovery by performing different types of therapy several days a week. "Therapy would start at 7:30 a.m. with an hour-and-a-half of occupational therapy, followed by an hour-and-a-half of physical therapy and finish with an hour of recreational therapy," he said. "Each day I felt that I was getting stronger, which gave me the strength to work hard every day I was down there."
Jared was working hard each day both physically and mentally and admits the whole experience was tiring and hard. He missed his friends back home greatly and felt he was "out of the loop," as he put it. It wasn't the easiest thing for him to text his friends at first, but he found other ways to communicate back home from Georgia. "I communicated with some of my friends through Skype, which kept me up to date on things going on back home," said Jared. "I was also able to watch my football team play their last three games thanks to Peabody Access (Television), which was something special for me to see."
He was aware that there was a foundation in his name in order to help with his expenses, such as the flight to Atlanta and his surgery. But what Jared was unaware of how big it was growing and how much money people from all over Massachusetts, as well as parts of Georgia, were donating. "It was an amazing feeling to know how generous people can be," Jared said with a smile. "To know that so many people were behind me in my recovery only motivated me even more to work harder each day."
Positive outlook
Less than four months later — 105 days, to be exact — Jared Coppola returned to his North Reading home on Dec. 18. "Returning home was something I was looking forward to ever since I was lying in that hospital bed in Boston," said Jared with his brother Brandon by his side. "I was so excited to know that it was before Christmas. And because my brother and sister were returning home from college for break, I knew that our family would be complete again and it brought us closer."
Although Jared is home, he is still hard at work each day as he performs some of the activities that he was doing when he was at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. "A physical therapist comes to my house several days a week in order to continue my progression in the process of my recovery," explained Jared. "After the flight back from Atlanta, I was really tired but I was able to fight through it and continued to do what I needed to in order to complete what my therapist asked me to do."
On Jan. 5, Jared returned to St. John's Prep for the first time since last June. "I was really excited to see all of my friends that I hadn't seen since the day I got hurt," said Jared. "It was also the first piece of putting my life back together, taking it one day at a time."
Today, Jared is still unable to walk. But the strides he has made since September are very promising. He lives every day to the fullest and doesn't let this speed bump come in between him and his personality. "I'm feeling a lot better and have regained movement and feeling throughout my body," he said. "The issue right now is getting my muscles strong again so that I'll be able to get up and walk.
"I feel I have a good chance to walk again, but I know that this is just the beginning of the next process in my road of recovery. No matter what the challenges are that lie ahead of me, I am determined to walk once more."
Last Updated on Friday, 16 April 2010 15:23 Written by Administrator Saturday, 17 October 2009 13:24
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