This is a three part article that started Sunday on the front page of the KC Star. Today was part 2, read tomorrow for part 3.
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A Matter of Faith, Part 1 | Prayers begin after high school player collapses
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Connie Stiles kneels beside her son on the sideline of the high school football game.
Something’s wrong with her 17-year-old boy. He won’t open his eyes. If Nathan would just look up at her, let her know he’s OK ...
I’m here, Bubby. I’m here.
The game, the last one of Nathan’s senior year, grinds on in the background. Across the field, fans cheer, unaware that Spring Hill’s standout running back, No. 44, lies motionless next to the bench.
The clock ticks: less than 2 minutes to the half.
One coach runs to find a doctor. The head coach tries to keep control of the game, listening in his headset as people tell him something’s wrong with Nathan.
Teammates in their white-and-purple jerseys guard their friend, their co-captain, from players running on and off the field.
Connie Stiles mutters a prayer.
Please, God, let it be nothing.
It will be one of thousands of prayers by friends and teachers and others in Spring Hill, a town of 5,400 straddling the Johnson-Miami county line.
Although no one on this October night knows it yet, all the prayers and the compassion and the injured boy on the sideline — strong in his faith, a straight-A student, star athlete and homecoming king — will transform their lives.
The physician will question the power of medicine. The coaches will wonder what they could have done differently. His mother, father and little sister will find a new source of strength.
But right now, Connie Stiles is on her knees. She just wants the boy who still calls her Momma to wake up.
She was sitting in the stands minutes ago when Nathan jogged off the field after the home team Osawatomie Trojans scored a two-point conversion. Something seemed wrong. Nathan’s walk. It was wobbly.
“I’m not feeling well,” Nathan told an assistant coach.
It’s nothing unusual in a fast-paced game like this one, with more than 80 points scored before the half. Players get hurt. They feel sick sometimes, exhausted.
Nathan sat on the bench.
All night, Connie, there with husband Ron, their 16-year-old daughter, Natalie, and Connie’s mom, had prayed to keep Nathan safe in this final game.
Please, God, just one more game.
Four games ago, the night he was crowned homecoming king, Nathan suffered a concussion. Before that, a broken hand on the third day the team practiced in pads.
After this game, he would probably never again play competitive football.
And so far, this has been the game of his life: two touchdowns and 165 yards rushing on offense, countless tackles on defense.
A coach told him to take a load off. He deserved a rest.
Seconds later, his teammates saw something they’d never seen in Nathan.
Tears were gathering in the eyes of their quiet leader, the player who never complained, the one who possessed a high tolerance for pain, the guy who still ached to play after getting a metal plate in his hand.
“My head hurts! My head hurts!”
Then he collapsed.
Now, after rushing from the stands on the other side of the field, Connie is on her knees.
Wake up, Bubby. Wake up. Please wake up.
• • •
Nathan had been running at full speed ever since he could walk.
At age 3 or 4, he decided to run away and tore down a country road toward Grandma’s house before his momma ran outside and scooped him up. A year later, he jumped off a swing set and tried to fly.
Ron and Connie Stiles knew they had a wild one.
Both grew up in Spring Hill, like their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents before them. They married in 1987.
Each had been married before. Ron, seven years older than Connie and owner of Spring Hill Oil, had three kids. Connie had lived in Arizona but felt drawn back to her hometown.
God put them together so they wouldn’t mess up other people, they joked.
They wanted children together, but it proved tough. Fertility drugs failed. They abandoned them. Then, one day, Connie learned she was pregnant.
Always people of deep faith, they gave the boy a biblical name: Nathaniel, meaning gift from God.
Natalie came along a year and a half later. She and Nathan became best friends, inseparable. He called her Natty. She called him Nater Tater or simply Brother.
Connie and Ron felt their life was blessed. God had been good to them. Five smart, healthy kids, good athletes taught to do their best.
Their parents tried to live the same way. Ron, elected a Miami County commissioner in 2004, gained a reputation for doing what’s best for people. Connie, a trained social worker, worked part time, spending as much time as she could with the kids.
Always there was God, Sunday school, church and Bible studies.
In high school, Nathan owned three Bibles, reading and studying each. He and Natalie would take them on vacation and stay up past midnight reading Scripture.
When the family struggled, faith in God pulled them through. Like in the late 1990s, when Ron’s appendix burst and he walked around for two weeks unaware of the toxic fluid in his body.
Or when Ron’s mother died 1½ years ago.
“Why are you crying?” Nathan asked his mom. “Grandma’s in heaven. Don’t you believe what you read? Don’t you believe what you tell us?”
He didn’t push his faith on others. Never proselytized. Never lectured his buddies who drank or partied.
Not a “Bible thumper,” says Cole Broockerd, one of Nathan’s closest friends. Nathan: the guy who knows his Bible and will tell you where he stands but won’t belittle you if you don’t feel the same.
His motto: Lead by example.
Yet, talking with Natalie, Nathan would confide a dream of one day bringing more people to God.
• • •
Get an ambulance. We need an ambulance.
Nathan lies motionless on the sideline. Suddenly, his left arm rises. Ron sees it, too.
Good! That’s good! Connie thinks.
Nathan is reaching for her. She’s certain. He hears her.
So many dreams for this boy. Simple dreams.
Graduate in May. He’ll be a valedictorian if he keeps up his 4.0 grade-point average. Brochures for Kansas State University stuff his backpack. He’ll become an engineer, marry, have kids for Momma to baby-sit.
Then the arm drops.
His body begins twitching. He’s having seizures, a sign of brain injury.
A physician, a volunteer at the game, pushes toward Nathan. Ron and Connie move aside.
They pace. Connie, on her cell, calls as many people as she can: Josie, Ron’s oldest child, and Connie’s sister and their pastor.
“Pray for Bubby,” she urges them. “He’s been hurt. It doesn’t look good.”
• • •
Nathan didn’t even think he’d play football his senior year.
Basketball, that was his sport. Fast and a good shot, he — and his coaches — thought this was going to be a special season.
But his buddies, guys he’d grown up with, were into football. They wanted him to play.
Whether it was his parents, teachers, coaches or buddies, Nathan didn’t like to disappoint. He’d play his senior year, try to help the team win some games.
The third practice in pads, on a running play, Nathan broke his hand.
His doctor, Keith Ratzlaff, took one look at him, good hand cradling the broken one, and saw the determined look he’d come to know. It didn’t take a medical degree to see Nathan wanted to get right back on the field.
Still, it wasn’t going to happen. It was a bad break. One that took a metal plate and six screws to repair.
He missed the first three games of the season.
Even still, the coaches could see the resolve in this kid. It wasn’t unusual for injured players to stand to the side in their jerseys, maybe a Coke in their hands, to watch the team practice, but Nathan dressed out every day, most days in full pads.
While the team scrimmaged, he ran sprints. Or he’d clock two miles on the track.
He wanted to be stronger when he got back on the field.
Coaches just shook their heads. What teen does that?
His second game back, on homecoming, the concussion.
Even though he’d managed to enjoy the football season, part of him was glad it was almost over. He wanted to help his teammates win one more game in a season when they had just one victory so far. Then basketball.
He was looking forward to the change of pace. He’d shared this with his mom not 24 hours before this last game as he’d stood beside the family’s refrigerator preparing to chug — as was his style — a jar of Mott’s applesauce.
“You always say that,” she told him, “even at the end of basketball season.”
“Yeah, but the thing about football is it can kill you,” Nathan said. “With basketball, you just lose a game.”
• • •
Coaches shuffle the two teams into the locker rooms for halftime. The Life Flight helicopter will be here soon. More chaos.
Players don’t need to see all of this.
Spring Hill coach Anthony Orrick sees Nathan’s dad before he leaves the field.
“What can I do?” he says to Ron Stiles.
Ron knows how much his son wanted to win this game.
“Get your defense to stop them,” Ron says. “Nathan wants you to win this. Tell the guys Nathan’s going to be OK.”
The sky is dark, illuminated only by the lights over the football field. A cool breeze stirs the grass.
As Orrick heads inside, he wonders what he will tell his players. Barely inside the door, he already sees tears, the shocked and scared faces of players and coaches.
When his own words don’t come, he uses Ron’s.
Get out there and stop them, he says. Nathan wouldn’t want you to quit. He’s going to be OK.
Let’s go out there and win it for Nathan.
No one knows the seriousness of what is happening. Players in the Osawatomie locker room aren’t sure which player is hurt.
Quarterback Seth Jones, while playing defense, hit a Spring Hill player hard just before the half. He wonders and worries — Is that the player who’s hurt?
The injury and the unknowns cast a pall over the field, through the stands, into the locker rooms.
With the teams still inside for halftime, Nathan’s family — Mom, Dad, sister and Grandma — watch as Nathan is lifted on board for the flight to the University of Kansas Hospital. They know they have a drive ahead.
The family can only watch as the helicopter’s engine revs and its blades stir the cool fall air.
In a few minutes, the players will head back to the field for the last half of football this season. The final score will look more like basketball:
Spring Hill 99, Osawatomie 72.
Few will care.
Their thoughts on No. 44, the teams meet at midfield after halftime and take a knee. Troy Bomgardner, an Osawatomie assistant coach, steps up. He believes in prayer, always has.
By now, the helicopter has carried Nathan into the dark autumn sky. Countless prayers go with him.
God, please take care of this boy.
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/14/2875254/a-matter-of-faith-part-1-prayers.html#ixzz1MX2KQNPO
Physician Keith Ratzlaff is moving from patient to patient in an Olathe clinic on a busy Monday afternoon when his office manager interrupts.
She’s flustered. Her message seems urgent.
“Nathan Stiles’ mom is here to see you.”
Connie Stiles. She’s been on the doctor’s mind — her whole family has, really — ever since he heard about Nathan and how he collapsed at Thursday night’s game. He’s thought about the moment he would first see her.
What would he say? What would she say?
Just three days ago, at 4:11 a.m. Oct. 29, after hours of trying to save the young football player, physicians at the University of Kansas Hospital declared Nathan dead.
Ever since, Ratzlaff has gone over and over in his mind what he, as Nathan’s family doctor, could have done differently. Was there something he missed? Should he have done more?
Initially, there’s guilt. Ratzlaff won’t deny that. That’s human nature.
It’s times like these, too, when people want to blame. They sue. They want someone to pay.
Rumors and speculation are swirling: Did a concussion earlier in the season somehow contribute to Nathan’s death?
But Ratzlaff has studied the chart, gone over the guidelines for treating patients with concussions. He checked off each one.
The CT scan Nathan had at the emergency room earlier in the month, after he suffered a concussion during the homecoming game, was clean. No signs of trauma. Nathan was no longer having headaches, hadn’t for a while.
Ratzlaff even kept Nathan out another week as a precaution. And when he did clear Nathan to go back, it was on a graduated plan where he wouldn’t see contact right away.
The whole thing is baffling.
I followed the guidelines. Did what I was supposed to do. But the tragedy still happened.
Did medicine fail here?
All day, he’s tried to focus on his work. But now Connie is in the waiting room.
He has no idea how this meeting will go. He knows, though, that he wants to talk with her. Comfort her.
Tell her he did everything he could.
But what will she say to him?
•••
The doctor wasn’t the first person on Connie Stiles’ list that day.
First she went to see two of the guys who had coached her son in football, Anthony Orrick and Tucker Woofter. At the end of the school day, the two sat in a basement classroom, finishing last-minute work.
Woofter, an assistant coach, had heard Nathan’s mom was in the building. She was working in the gym on preparations for her son’s celebration of life.
In just three days, more than 3,300 people would pack the bleachers and hardback chairs, even stand along the railing. It would turn into a revival of sorts, with the Stiles family’s pastor, Laurie Johnston, talking about Jesus and how Nathan followed him.
Some would wonder whether it was right to use a school gymnasium for an overtly religious event. But the gym was rented for the service, and those who know Nathan say you can’t talk about him without talking about God.
Teachers would tell about Nathan the perfectionist, who in his junior year got to school at 7:30 many mornings so math teacher Brent Smitheran could help him with trigonometry. Nathan already had a 98 percent in the class.
“He had to have it completely mastered,” Smitheran said. “He would be upset about missing a question on a test.”
But now, as the coaches dealt with their own private doubts and personal grief, they saw Nathan’s mom peek through the narrow window beside the classroom door. She wanted to come in.
Head coach Orrick’s heart sank. He hadn’t seen Nathan’s mom since the hospital when family and friends, teammates and coaches filled two waiting rooms.
The coach had already received an email from Ron, Nathan’s dad. He wanted to talk to the coach, whenever Orrick was ready.
Now it looked like he’d better be ready.
All weekend, both coaches had gone through what had happened.
Orrick wondered whether he’d missed something. Did Nathan get back on the field too soon? The boy was a quiet leader — a coach’s dream — who never complained.
Did the coaches fail him somehow?
Woofter felt guilty for “not protecting one of my favorite kids on the planet.”
When he first heard Nathan’s mom was in the school, his stomach dropped. Woofter figured she was here to “chew our butts for letting this happen.”
In a way, he thought he deserved it.
He felt like it was his fault. He just couldn’t figure out how.
•••
Seth Jones, Osawatomie’s quarterback, also carried a heavy load in the days after Nathan died.
During the game, just before the half, Seth had delivered a jarring blow to a Spring Hill player, the kind of hit that makes fans wince.
At halftime, Seth heard that a Spring Hill player had been badly hurt and was being taken by helicopter to a hospital.
If it was the player he’d hit …
Later that night, Seth learned the injured player was Nathan.
Seth had known Nathan for years. Played against him. Admired him as an athlete and as a person. A friendly guy, always smiling, the first to hold out a hand to someone on the ground.
And Seth didn’t remember hitting Nathan that night.
But as pain over Nathan’s death rippled across the community, rumors spread around Spring Hill and Osawatomie. Questions began to light up Facebook. Kids texted other kids, saying Seth hit Nathan.
The words weren’t malicious, but the question was clear: Did you cause his death?
But the truth is, when Seth hit the Spring Hill player, Nathan already was collapsed on the sideline.
Seth isn’t one to get in people’s faces. So when other kids said things to him about Nathan, he just walked away.
Kids can say what they want, he thought. He worried more about Nathan’s family.
“I would hate for his family to think I did it,” he would say.
The day after Nathan died, on a Saturday morning when Seth was still in bed, his cell phone rang.
It was Ron Stiles, Nathan’s dad.
•••
The last time Connie came to Olathe Family Physicians, she was with Nathan. On that day in mid-October, when they had a follow-up with Ratzlaff, she could tell her son was itching to get back on the field.
He felt strong. If he started back soon, he could still help his buddies win a couple of games.
But they’d have to see what Ratzlaff had to say.
As Connie and Nathan sat in the exam room that day, she wished he would skip the rest of the season. Just concentrate on basketball. But she knew it wasn’t her decision.
Before the doctor signed off on Nathan’s return to football, Ratzlaff wanted to make sure it was a family decision.
“Mom, are you sure you’re OK with this?” Ratzlaff said then.
She thinks of that moment now as she waits in his office. It seems so long ago. So much in her life has changed.
It’s toward the end of the day, and Ratzlaff has patients lined up, but they can wait. He walks through the door.
Here’s the doctor. The mother. But this time, no son.
“I’ve looked over Nathan’s chart,” Ratzlaff tells her. “Over and over. And I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”
But already he can see the compassion in her eyes. He knows why she’s here.
She’s not here to blame. She’s here for support. For him and for her.
The two will comfort each other.
And now Nathan’s here, too. Ratzlaff can feel his presence.
She tells him what KU Hospital told her: It was a brain bleed.
The injury that killed Nathan was unrelated to the concussion, and it happened after the CT scan. The bleeding caused insurmountable damage, depriving the brain of oxygen for too long.
Ratzlaff couldn’t have prevented what happened.
Relief washes over him. Medicine didn’t fail him. Or Nathan.
Connie tells him what she told coach Orrick and assistant coach Woofter just an hour or two before.
It isn’t your fault.
She tells the doctor what Ron told Seth, what Nathan’s dad so desperately wanted the young quarterback to know.
No one is to blame.
Nathan’s mom and his doctor talk for 30 or 40 minutes, sharing stories about Nathan. This is good for them.
When her son was 4 or 5, Connie says, he tied a cape around his neck and jumped off the backyard swing set. He was sure he could fly.
She worried he’d hurt his leg, so the two went to the Olathe clinic.
Another doctor treated him that day.
“He thinks he can fly,” Connie told the doctor.
The doctor leaned in, looked at her son closely.
“Now, Nathan,” he said to the preschooler. “You know you can’t fly.”
On the way home, Nathan sat in the back seat, his lips pursed in a pout.
“That doctor’s wrong,” Nathan told his mom. “He doesn’t know me.”
Ratzlaff, his doctor for the past seven years, did.
“I guess Nathan was right,” Ratzlaff tells Connie, tears welling. “He’s flying now.”
Nathan’s death was part of God’s plan. On that, she and her family agree. To not believe that would go against who they are, a family of strong faith. It would go against who Nathan was.
Before Connie leaves, heading back to Spring Hill, she tells Ratzlaff that she and her family have a plan to carry on Nathan’s name. His legacy.
She tells him to come to the high school in three days.
After Nathan’s death, many feel guilt, wishing they could have done more, wondering if they missed something.
Coaches. Players. His doctor.
But what everyone will discover is a family who never had to ask why their son died.
As the principal of Nathan’s school would say: “The Stiles family, and the way they handled this, has helped the rest of us heal.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/15/2877525/to-family-high-school-football.html#disqus_thread#ixzz1MX27yBYS
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