Story and video by Hector Molina

From quality turf fields and bright lights to a field that’s mostly dirt and needs car headlights for illumination, Tebucky Jones has seen it all when it comes to the gridiron. For a Super Bowl champion who’s used to crowds of 70,000 at Gillette Stadium, the old rusty benches at Hungerford Park in Berlin, CT are a huge change of scenery.

A former NFL safety, who played seven years in the league with three different teams, Jones could have coached anywhere at any level, but decided to come back to coach at his alma matter, New Britain High School.

The 6’2 218 lb. safety grew up in New Britain during a time when gang violence and drug use was at an all-time high.

His mother sold cocaine and other drugs in order to put food on the table.

As a child, Jones bounced from house to house and had to steal doughnuts from the neighboring 7-Eleven since it wasn’t guaranteed he’d have three meals a day.

Today, driving a white Range Rover and owning a mansion with a kitchen as big as the whole first floor of a normal house, Jones has come a long way since his childhood days.

A difficult life made him into the person that he is today, a man who gives so much back to a place where he had so little.

Jones said the challenge of coaching at the high school level prompted him to coach at his alma matter.

He is full of sage advice, based on his own college and NFL playing days. For example, he tells his defensive backs that they can tell what route a receiver is going to run within the first five yards off the line of scrimmage by looking at the receiver’s hips.

Jones calls those 5-yards off the line of scrimmage the drop zone. “Belichick taught me that one,” he says.

These days Jones puts children in the community first, as every summer he holds the Tebucky Jones Youth Football Camp where he shows young players the proper techniques of the game as well as teaching them how to conduct themselves off the field.

Jones once struggled with balancing football and family. At 15, he became a father and had three kids by the age of 19.

Many of his “boys” from the hood told him he should drop his family and focus on football. Jones admits that there was a short period of time when he listened to them because he didn’t know any better.

He had grown up the son of a father who he never saw. It wasn’t till the 15-year old Jones held his first-born 4-week old daughter, Letesha, that he realized he won’t ever leave his family. Once Letesha threw up on her dad’s shirt, he knew his kids meant the world to him.

He was born with God given talent, an All-State athlete in three sports (football, basketball, and track), but what made him different from the other talented guys he played with in the rough neighborhoods and parks of New Britain, is that Tebucky Jones had a plan to live a better life.

An avid horse racing fan who enjoys betting at the casino while enjoying a nice cigar, Jones referred to himself growing up as a “horse with blinders on.” He always focused on what was in front of him and where he wanted to end up. He always made sure to tune out people who could mess with his dream.

With all the success, Jones has remained humble, and that’s what he preaches to his New Britain High School football team.

Lyndon Chambers, a senior linebacker, said having Jones as a coach has helped shape him into a better person.

“He teaches us to always be humble, to always let your actions speak rather than our mouths. He tells us to conduct ourselves as responsible young men, and to always stay on track and don’t let anything get in the way of your focus,” Chambers said.

Jones also wanted a better life for his own kids. He didn’t want them to grow up not knowing where their next meal was going to come from, nor having to stay warm by sticking a lit match in a mayonnaise jar as he was forced to do.

However, there came a point where Jones thought his kids had it too good.

“Whatever system came out they got, Sega, Playstation, Xbox, you name it, they had it,” Jones said, adding his kids were becoming soft and too privileged. He described his kids as “pudding pops — soft and too sweet.” he said. “I had to bring them down to earth a little.”

Even though the family was living in a 14,000 square foot mansion in Farmington. Jones brought them down to the same Boys and Girls Club he went to as a kid growing up in New Britain.

Jones said he wanted his kids see both sides of life and to have friends from all different walks of life.

His son Tebucky Jones Jr., who played college football at UConn before transferring to Fordham for his last two years, had a brief stint on the Tennessee Titans practice squad and is currently an NFL free agent looking for a team.

Jones said his oldest son benefited from the Boys and Girls Club the most out of all his kids.

Tebucky Jr. said by the time he was 13 he was already 5’10. His size led many people to think he was this tough kid but, in reality, he was the complete opposite. Jones Jr. said he wore sweater vests and would get made fun of when he first started going to the Boys and Girls Club.

Jones Jr. also talked about growing up not having his dad in the bleachers during his Pop Warner games, an experience that made him desire to coach high school rather than the pros even though he had plenty of NFL defensive coaching offers.  Jones returned to New Britain as an assistant coach to coach his son Tebucky Jr. during his son’s junior and senior year at New Britain High School.

Even though he was drafted by the pros out of Syracuse University, and went on to win a Super Bowl, own a mansion and drive nice cars, Jones says he doesn’t let any of that define him. The New England Patriots 2001 Super Bowl XXXVI champ never wears his ring, seeing it as just one part of his life.

“When I got drafted, I could see everyone, family and friends, really happy, excited, making a big deal out of, but it wasn’t about the fame for me,” Jones said. He says it was all about his love for football and how it provided him a way out of the slums of New Britain.

Even though Jones has spent a lot of time around the sport, he says he is trying to show his players that there is more to life than just football.

“I’m trying to show them it’s not all about playing football in college and stuff like that, it’s great if you can, but it’s more about going to school and trying to further your education and try to make things better for your family.”

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Story and video by Kevin Bostiga

He saunters out of the pizzeria, big white box in hand. He looks both ways before lazily crossing in front of traffic in no rush. The 6-foot three-inch tall hockey defenseman smiles and laughs as he jokes about what a car not stopping could mean for his career.

His lackadaisical demeanor display, he enters his apartment at the Oaks in Storrs Center. He slides off his jacket to reveal a black futuristic looking athletic shirt with his name on the front in bold red lettering: “Gendron.”

Miles Gendron falls into the leather sectional couch that lines the walls, dropping his pizza on the massive round ottoman. The remaining sunlight shines through the walls of windows of his corner residence. He begins to talk as he shovels the pie in his mouth.

Gendron has occupied the blue line for the UConn Huskies every game this season. Sporting number 10 with a stylish fishbowl facemask, he’s netted two and helped with six more in 18 games. The bigger stat he boasts is a plus 10 or minus rating, which says more about his ability to defend than anything else. Not known to throw his weight around on account of the lack thereof, Gendron relies on his elusiveness and hockey sense to get the job done on the defensive end. Gendron is an offensive minded defenseman, and he knows why.

“My skating is my best attribute as a hockey player,” he said. The 190 pounds draped on his lofty frame looks not unlike a few beanstalks moving as one, but it is with good authority his eloquence on the ice is his best asset. His strength, the very opposite, but he makes up for with his intelligence.

Gendron committed to the University of Connecticut after turning down offers from Sacred Heart University and University of Vermont. Gendron said UConn’s switch to the Hockey East conference was a major factor in his decision.

“What it came down to was, UConn’s a new program,” he said. “I thought we had a chance to build something special, and I think we’re headed in that direction.”

Thanks to the conference switch, UConn’s schedule boasts some of the toughest opponents in college hockey, but college puck is just a stepping-stone to a bigger prize: the National Hockey League.

With NHL scouts at almost every high school game he played, Gendron was drafted by the Ottawa Senators in the third round, 70^th overall in the 2014 NHL Draft. It was a night he’ll never forget, filled with feelings he’ll never revisit.

Sitting, waiting, wishing to hear his name get called, he sat through 69 different names across two days with his girlfriend, Jackie. As he turned to her, predicting that the Chicago Blackhawks would take him with the 83^rd pick, “from the Rivers School,” rang out on the loudspeaker.

“I stood up immediately, chills went through my body,” Gendron said. “It’s just something that I’ll never feel again.”

It’s with good authority that one could say the Senators pulled the trigger on the right guy that day in 2014. Both players and coaches have had good things to say.

Derek Pratt, captain of the Huskies, and fellow defenseman, said Gendron plays with an unusual, opportune set of attributes.

“With his size, I mean he’s tall, so for being that tall and being able to skate that well, it’s pretty impressive,” Pratt said. “And he just, he knows where to be, he gets in the right areas. So maybe where his strength lacks, he can be in the right areas with his skating.”

Gendron hopes to beef up to 205 pounds as soon as possible, but certainly before he sees ice with a professional organization. Despite his lack of strength, Miles is confident his play will translate well to the NHL.

“I think the NHL is switching to a more face paced speed game, so I think if I’m just using my feet and I don’t slow the game down, I think that benefits me that the games going that way,” he said.

Brendan Buckley, an assistant coach for the Huskies, echoed both Gendron’s and Pratt’s sentiments, saying that Gendron’s skating ability and offensive minded play makes him a great asset.

“That’s something we’ve worked [on] with him, is after we break the puck out, out of our defensive zone, he’s a guy I want to see join, be the second wave of offense,” Buckley said.

After the draft, Gendron would play a year in the British Columbia Hockey League for the Penticton Vees, where the team won the division and league titles. Playing 90 games helped him hone his skills at the defensive end, considering he had only started playing the position two years prior, thanks to his high school coach, Shawn McEachern. A position that Gendron said he could not admit he truly filled until he came to UConn.

After being cut from the U.S. U14 team, Gendron went to a development camp for team Massachusetts, which McEachern was in charge of. McEachern, an NHL veteran of five teams, one of which the Ottawa Senators, was on the ice for tryouts. Miles did not disappoint.

“I toe dragged him when he was playing in the drill,” Gendron said with his usual huge grin. A toe drag is when a player extends his reach on his dominant hand side, and uses the toe of the blade of the stick to drag the puck back, creating space between the puck and the defender. “He came up to me and was like, ‘You gotta come look at my school.’” Showing hesitation, McEachern told him, “You can’t say no without coming to take a look.”

Needless to say, it was a great choice for Gendron that would open a door he had been trying to unlock his whole life, with a key that he never expected.

            Gendron’s attendance at the Rivers School in Weston Mass. helped both him and the school’s program. His freshman year, the team went 8-20. But thanks to recruits like Gendron, by the end of his senior year, the team had won two league championships, and qualified for the playoffs, which they had never done up to that point. During his junior year, McEachern switched him from forward to defense after his team was having trouble breaking the puck out of the defensive zone.

McEachern recalled that Gendron’s play on the powerplay led him to the switch. He also said that Gendron would always beat the first man out of the defensive zone, blowing past the competition, further reinforcing how good and natural a skater Gendron really is.

Players rarely switch positions that late in the game, which left Gendron initially agitated.

“Oh, I was pissed,” Gendron said. However, it ended up being for the best, as Gendron saw time with the puck on his stick a lot more at defense than offense.

After playing six games midway through his junior season, he switched back. His senior year, Gendron occasionally played forward, but still considered himself to be just that. It wasn’t until a USA Development camp when Gendron was again switched to defense and told by camp coaches, “You’re a defenseman.”

Forwards play up in the play, trying to put the puck in the net, or forecheck, badgering the opponent while on defense. Defense serves a more surveying role, hanging on the blue line, waiting patiently to keep the puck in the zone, and to be there to meet the opposition’s rush. Gendron described the different positions in terms of how both positions play in the offensive zone, a peculiar testament to his thoughts and play on the ice.

Born in Oakville, Ontario, to Charlie Gendron and Dawn Caroll, Miles Gendron moved to Shrewsbury, Mass. on his fifth birthday, the same year he picked up a hockey stick. Playing up an age group since his start because of natural ability, he was on three elite teams through his youth career, including the Minutemen Flames, the South Shore Kings, and the Boston Mission. Gendron said he was just about the best player on the team until he played for the Mission, where he played with the likes of Jack Eichel now of the Buffalo Sabres, and Ryan Donato of the Boston Bruins.

“I think I’d be better if my neighborhood played hockey,” Gendron said. “We didn’t even play street hockey.”

A multi-sport athlete until high school, Gendron was not quite your live for hockey type kid. He could swing a bat just as well, if not better than he could swing a hockey stick.

“I played ball in the spring and summer,” Gendron said. “Didn’t even touch the ice.”

The time off does not seem to have hindered his game, nor did it diminish his infatuation with the game. His teammates and coaches agree, he’s someone they like having on his team. And with the Ottawa Senators calling Gendron on a weekly basis, which hasn’t happened before, his qualities are shining more than ever, on and off the ice.

Derek Pratt said his reliability is constant, all the while keeping it light as can be.

“In terms of keeping it loose, he’ll joke around when maybe it’s a serious time, but he’s always focused,” Pratt said. “[He’s] someone you like to have on your team; someone you can rely on.”

Buckley again reiterated Pratt’s thoughts, saying that with experience, Gendron’s work ethic has made him a confident player on the ice.

“I think he’s a guy who’s pretty confident in his game right now, he’s positive,” Buckley said. “I never see him, kind of, yelling at other teammates, and I think he goes out there and works hard, and he wants to win. [He] shows by example.”

Buckley continued, saying that Gendron is just a pleasure to have on his team.

“Well, he’s fun to coach because you can tell he enjoys hockey,” Buckley said. “When we go to practice, a lot of times he’s got a smile on his face, which is fun. You have to enjoy it… He enjoys the process.”

 

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Story and video by Brandon Martinez

With grace and poise, Monica Marcello uses the momentum of the board to send her hurtling into the air and lands perfectly. The judges are impressed, as they give her a near perfect score. Marcello has been doing this for a long time, nine years to be exact, but she had to give it up before the effects of the sport damaged her body permanently.

Now 20-years-old, Marcello looks back on her days as a gymnast, with both pride and grief, as she stands there on the diving board. With the same grace and poise of the gymnast inside of her, Marcello uses the momentum of the diving board to send her straight up into the air, contorts her body in ways that the average person can’t, and finally hits the water. The splash is not well contained, so she isn’t too proud of her last dive, but she keeps practicing. After all, that’s what the University of Connecticut recruited her for.

Monica Marcello is a diver for the UConn Swimming and Diving team and has been on the team for three years now. She has won numerous awards, both colligate and high school, and has broken some high school records, as well.

Though Marcello excels at diving, it wasn’t her first choice of sport. Marcello’s first love was gymnastics.

When she was three-years-old, Marcello’s parents enrolled her into gymnastics classes, and she was a natural. Marcello had Olympic gymnast status inside of her, as she won competition after competition. However, all the excessive contortion, the running, and jumping took its toll on Marcello’s body.

“When I was in seventh grade, I herniated two discs in my lower back and that took me out for a year,” Marcello said. “The beginning of my freshman year (of high school), I was finally cleared. My back didn’t feel to great, but my spirits were high.”

Even though she was told she would never be able to compete again, Marcello returned with fire in her belly. However, her body could not recover fast enough from the previous injury. Due to Marcello’s premature return to gymnastics, her body broke down on her one more time.

“I returned a little quicker than I should have,” Marcello said. “I tore my ACL the day before the state competition, where I was actually seeded first.”

Marcello was once again sidelined, this time forcing her to give up a chance to add another possible award to her collection. Marcello was still not deterred.  Marcello tried once more to return to her sport, but was welcomed back with a broken ankle.

“That completely took me out of gymnastics.” Marcello said. “I was without a sport, trying to heal my ankle and my knee.”

At 14-years-old, Marcello had to give up the only sport she had ever participated in, and the only sport she ever loved. She wasn’t sure she would be able to do any physical activities again, since the strain of gymnastics put irreversible damage on her body. She also wasn’t sure she even wanted to try another sport, because nothing could ever be the same as gymnastics was to her.

Marcello did not participate in any athletics for in her freshman and sophomore year of high school. She started gaining some weight since this was the first time in her life she had not been active. In order to get back into shape, and get her rehabilitate her back and ACL, Marcello entered physical therapy.

It was there that she would first be advised to try diving.

“ To cope without gymnastics, my physical therapist suggested diving to me,” Marcello said. “I did not want to go into diving because it’s what fat ex-gymnasts do.”

Marcello was hesitant, like a child on her first day of school, when she first started to dive. Her heart still longed for the beams and the vault, but after careful consideration, she decided to try her skills on the diving board. It was a frustrating transition for her, as she moved on from a sport she excelled in for her entire life and on to a sport she knew nothing about.

She hated being the newcomer. Trying to learn and excelling at a new sport was already behind her; she had done that in gymnastics. To take novice lessons, to buy a swimsuit and to be the newest member of a team was an experience, Marcello remembers, but not one she looks back on favorably.

“I didn’t love it,” Marcello said. “My heart was still in gymnastics.”

Even though her heart was lagging behind, Marcello excelled in diving. She received encouragement from family and friends about how well she performed and decided to join the Middletown High School Diving Team.

For two years, Marcello dived for her high school, improving and getting better with each practice, earning All-American honors for the sport.  She didn’t love the sport and it would never replace gymnastics, but she was excelling and she was enjoying it. Marcello caught the eyes of many people who watched her dive, including her coaches, family, friends and teammates. However, the most important person who noticed Marcello, and her diving talent, was the University of Connecticut diving coach, John Bransfield.

Bransfield liked what he saw in Marcello and wanted to further improve her skills. When Marcello committed to UConn for diving and Bransfield learned about her and her background, he was up for the challenge of coaching her.

“I’m sure she has worked just in hard in her gymnastics as she has done with everything else in her life,” Bransfield said. “Whenever someone applies themselves with that intensity, trying to back up and make adjustments can be a little much.”

Bransfield knew that Marcello came up from a unique background, but he treated Marcello like any other diver he has coached. However, he has spent a little extra time with her and teaching her to slow down and let the diving board do most of the work for her, instead of doing the work herself like she did in gymnastics. Bransfield’s experience and dedication to Marcello has paid off, as she has won several meets for UConn. Bransfield said he has enjoyed coaching Marcello and loves watcher her improve even further.

“The most rewarding component for coaching her is watching her light up when she perfects a dive or her form,” Bransfield said. “When she realizes she has done something different, the response that she has to it is like watching a small child that just got a new toy.”

Marcello chose UConn and its diving program over other schools because she felt an intensity from Bransfield that no other coach had. For three years, Marcello has been under Bransfield’s wing and she has left a lasting impression on Bransfield as a coach.

“Monica is one of the hardest workers that I have ever coached, and I’ve coached at five schools and for 20 years,” Bransfield said. “For somebody that driven to be told that they are trying too hard is kind of a paradox and it is a hard pill to swallow.”

In and out of the pool, Marcello works hard. Being a full time student athlete and have to balance class work and your sport can be stressful. In order to deal with that stress, Marcello takes the short drive from campus to her apartment on Red Oak Hill in Wilmington, Connecticut. There, she takes to the oven and stove and dives into cooking, making quinoa, grilled chicken and different salads.

After the smoke from the stove has cleared the kitchen and the dishes have filled the sink, Marcello encloses herself in her room and meditates. With candles lit and soft music faintly in the background, Marcello goes into the tree pose, purging her mind and body from the stress of the day.

“Food is a huge part of my life and making sure I’m taking care of my body,” Marcello said. “Whether it’s cooking, meditation or yoga, I try and do things that will take care of my body mental, physically and spiritually.”

Marcello’s body has been through the ringer in her life, with two herniated discs, a torn ACL and a broken ankle, but she has persevered. A new sport has not only helped rehabilitated her body, but also gave her a new hobby, a new challenge. Marcello has many regrets about gymnastics, but it’s an experience she will hold forever.

Diving has is now apart of her identity, and it tells her tell of perseverance.

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Story and video by Garrett Spahn

On a Friday night in the summer of 2015,  a group of hometown friends  congregated at a fire pit in Jack DiPierro’s backyard, their favorite hangout spot. There they cracked jokes, told stories, and simply enjoyed each others’ company, like they had been doing since elementary school.

To keep the good times going, DiPierro constantly stoked the fire with a seemingly endless and perfectly organized 8-foot wall of cut wood.

But this gathering was different from previous ones; this time the group gathered around a MacBook Pro so it could Skype Jared Grier, who was in Atlanta, GA, at the Shepard Center undergoing rehab and treatment. Grier had fallen out of a tree, fracturing his vertebrae and compressing his spinal chord, leaving him paralyzed. The laptop occupied Grier’s usual chair around the fire; the boys didn’t think it was right to have an empty one in the circle.

“It was always kind of a big thing when we would Skype him,” Sam Evans, a friend of Grier’s recalled of that summer. “The only time we ever really saw him in person was like a week after the incident. He was in rough shape at the time and it was hard to see him like that.

“But when we Skyped him, he was obviously getting a little bit more of himself back each time. His voice would get louder because he could move his chest more, and he could laugh, and would start to laugh again. It was a huge difference each time we Skyped him; it was great to see all the progress.”

Grier has miraculously managed to work his way back to life as a fully independent college student, through lessons he learned working on his farm, training as a devoted track athlete, and using his own self fueled determination.

A few months earlier on May 15, 2015, Grier ended his semester at Worcester Polytechnic Institute after taking final exams, and was looking forward to spending his summer in the quaint setting of Granby, CT tucked away on his farm with his close-knit group of high school friends.

Grier’s semester ended earlier than others,  so he returned to Worcester, MA, for the weekend to spend time with the senior members of his fraternity in their pale yellow frat house before they graduated.

Grier was out throwing a Frisbee with his friends, when he decided to climb a nearby tree, something he says he has always loved to do. When climbing down, Grier missed a branch while trying to transfer limbs, and fell 12 feet to the ground; the fall immediately paralyzed him from the nipples down.

“I didn’t feel anything, but it felt as though the wind was knocked out of me. I was just on the ground, unable to really move any of my body. My arms felt very heavy and I couldn’t move my legs or anything,” Grier recalled.

Grier’s step-mom, Sue Okie, started a blog almost immediately after the accident, to keep friends and family updated on his condition.

“Today everything changed,” she wrote. “Life as we know it will never be the same. We will meet new people, experience new things and see everything from a perspective we never could have imagined. Raw emotion, pain, frustration, exhaustion. These will become an integral part of our lives at a level we could have never imagine,” Okie said in a blog post on May 15.

Initially, Grier spent three weeks at Massachusetts General Hospital near campus. The assessment revealed he had fractured his C6 vertebrae, the 6th lowest in his neck of 7 vertebrae, as well as compressing his spinal chord.  Doctors determined he should be transferred to the Shepard Center, a facility specializing in spinal chord injuries in Atlanta, GA.

While in Georgia, Grier endured multiple surgeries as well as daily physical therapy so he could regain strength as well as nerve function. On only his second day at the Shepard Center, he agreed to participate in an experimental stem cell research study.

“At that time I felt as though I would take whatever chance I could gain anything back, so I accepted the offer,” Grier said. A few weeks later, Grier had 2 million stem cells injected into his spinal chord.

After his surgery, Grier went through what he described as a “boot camp” of intensive physical therapy. It covered everything from physical care and rehabilitation to personal independence, which involved teaching him how to adjust his daily routines so he could get dressed and get in and out of bed on his own. Grier said he was also educated about spinal chord injuries. He learned important stretches that he now does everyday to maintain muscle flexibility.  In the beginning, Shepard Center staff had to do them for him, but he is now able to do them on his own.

Grier has made major improvements since then. His injury classification was deescalated a level, to a C7 vertebrae fracture, essentially meaning the vertebrae he broke is compared to one lower, which causes less damage. Grier has also improved motion in his arms, wrists, and torso.

At the Shepard Center, Grier was trained and taught to do strength exercises. He said he worked to build muscle, so things like transferring himself from his wheel chair to a booth when he goes out to eat, or his wheel chair into his car would be possible for him to do on his own.

When comparing himself before and after the Shepard Center, Grier said, “it’s black and white,” because of the improvements he has made. Gaining back his physical strength has been his biggest accomplishment. When he first came home, he couldn’t get out of the couch at his house, but now he does it multiple times a day with ease, he said.

Grier said his latest and greatest accomplishment was on Oct. 21, when he drove a car on his own, a little over a year after the accident that had left him paralyzed.

“Just one more step to being right back where I was. It’s not disabled, it’s differently abled,” Grier said on a Facebook post after driving.

Grier compared driving again to the liberation of turning 16 when he got his license, having the freedom to go where he wanted whenever he wanted.

Grier drives with hand controls; one hand is fixed to the steering wheel on a tri pin to steer. He rocks a lever back in order to brake and forward in order to accelerate with his other hand.

Grier has returned to his boyhood home, a large farm in a quiet part of Granby, CT where he lives with his father, Jon Grier, stepmother, stepbrother Logan Fry, 5 dogs, 1 horse, 10 mini horses, 3 sheep, 2 Nigerian pygmy goats, a goose, and a coop full of chickens.

The property, hidden far back from the road by a long driveway, blocked by a cattle grate, includes a barn, chicken coop, pastures for horse and goats, a pond, as well as lush woods that surround it.

“One of the things I learned about the environment I grew up in, specifically the fact that I lived on a vast piece of land, was that there was always something that needed to be done,” Grier said. This included mowing the lawn, feeding the animals, stacking hay and doing whatever else was necessary to maintain the land.

As he was growing up, Grier took the hard earned work ethic he learned from his home, and decided to apply it to running. He joined his middle school cross-country team in 8th grade and became hooked on the sport.

His newfound love for running led to him to join his track team at Granby Memorial High School, where Grier truly fell into his niche. Grier won first place at the North Central Connecticut Conference in the 4×100 meter sprint and was 6th in the state in the 4×100 meter sprint as well as the 100-meter sprint. He also broke the high school record for the indoor 300-meter sprint  — the last race he would ever run before his injury.

Eight-year High School Track Coach Bob Casey said Grier was a mediocre miler, the team wasn’t very good, and so Casey had the freedom to assign Grier to sprinting. “Everything kind of came together for him,” Casey said.

“My favorite part of running was the last sprint of each race when you’re neck and neck with someone, pushing as hard as you can to beat them. I soon realized I didn’t have to deal with all the beginning running and could do events that work, just a neck and neck sprint,” Grier said.

Casey believes Grier’s hard work ethic led to his success.

“One of the things was, he established a goal. Because outside of the shot put record, for indoor, the 300-meter record was the oldest record we had. Nobody had broken it. That became his goal. And he worked to achieve that goal, and it was the focus all the way through that last year. Everything he did was with that in mind,” Casey said.

Casey said when he heard about Grier’s injury, he had no idea how to respond.

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t send him a card, an email, I didn’t donate (to a fund established for him), and I didn’t know what do quite honestly. And it bothered me for a long time.” Casey said.

But one day, he called the family, and after almost a year  from the date of the accident, the coach began planning an alumni track meet, where the proceeds would be donated to the family.

The meet raised around $2,500 and over 50 alumni athletes returned to Granby. Casey said the best part was for Grier to see how the team and community supported his son.

“Here’s a kid who should be going to parties, chasing girls, and drinking beer or doing whatever, and here he is learning how to put on his socks,” Casey said. Casey said he thought reuniting Grier

Casey believes that the lessons Grier learned in track, like setting goals and training to beat the 300-meter record, will benefit him in his recovery, Grier agrees.

He said his rehabilitation at the Shepard Center was all about setting goals. Short term, like gaining the strength to switch from a power wheelchair to a manual chair, which he accomplished, and long-term goals like his won day-to-day independence.

“Having that prior training of working hard and knowing that putting in the effort that will pay off in the long run, allowed me to see that even though that day [of the injury] I could barely lift a few pounds and not even lift my arm above my head because my right tricep wasn’t even there, I knew it would just take time and I needed to work at it,” Grier said.

He said understanding that just because sometimes in one race he wouldn’t achieve his goal, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be able to in the next race. This has helped his recovery process.

He understands that the world does not slow down for him, even though he is now paralyzed. He uses his farm as a symbol for how time waits for no man.

“Whether or not you do anything, the grass and weeds will continue to grow,” Grier explained. “So no matter what happens, you have to keep up with the time, and understand that everything continues to move forward, whether you are or not,” he said.

After taking a year to live at home and adjust to his new lifestyle, Grier is now back at WPI, taking classes, attending fraternity functions, and continuing to make progress.

Grier said his rehabilitation has granted him the physical and mental strength to reach his goal of independence. He has made great progress with his new strength, like getting himself in and out of bed, getting ready in the morning, and getting in and out of his own car to drive.

“I was surprised at how far along he was,” Casey said. “I didn’t expect him to be able to wheel himself in the wheelchair. He’s really gone quite a ways. Everyday I’m sure there’s something special he has to overcome, but he’s come a long way already.”

Fraternity brother Miles Robinson said seeing Grier’s full independence while he is back at WPI has been “awesome.” Robinson was abroad in Panama when Grier first returned to WPI, so when he returned and saw Grier again, he said it was incredible how far he had progressed from when he was first injured just a year and a half ago.

Grier said his future goals have also changed as a response to his injury. As a mechanical engineer interested in focusing on manufacturing and design, he said he wants to come up with ways to improve life for himself, as well as others in his position by creating new tools that make things more accessible for people who are paralyzed.

Grier is projected to graduate with his mechanical engineering degree in 2019, and would like to start looking into internships to further prepare him for his future, regardless of his injury.

Grier’s life prior to his injury did a lot to mentally prepare him for his new life after his injury. Dating all the way back to his hard work of running on the track and working on the family farm, Grier’s mindset has always been about setting and achieving goals. No matter how daunting his tasks, Grier has always been willing to accept a challenge, and use his powerful internal drive to achieve what he wants, no matter how much the circumstances seem to be against him.

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Story and video by Steven Tucker

The sun beats down during a late May afternoon in Clearwater, Fla. In the stands of Bright House Field, spectators seek a shady spot while fanning themselves with a copy of the American Athletic Conference tournament program, stopping momentarily for deep swigs of water.

On the diamond, the UConn third baseman steps into an environment that would be hazardous to a real Husky. Despite the sweltering Florida heat, Willy Yahn dresses in the same attire as he would for a chilly early season game in Storrs: long sleeve Under Armour under a glowing white jersey soon to be soiled by a warm-up web gem.

His cap points to the future of his jersey. A white sweat line runs through the middle of the hook “C” on the center as a symbol of the two years of long practices and weekend series that led him to this day’s game in Florida. The cap is torn though the front and down the center and the condition of the brim reflects the scrapes and bruises that have come along the way. But the hat serves its owner, who has remained loyal to it throughout the past two years.

This sweltering day, Yahn takes his battle-tested cap and places it on top of his hair, which he has pulled back to fit after a full season of growth.

Ready for the tournament match-up against South Florida, Yahn takes the field with a sense of urgency reminiscent of Dustin Pedroia or a young David Eckstein. Even before the first pitch, grass and dirt smear the blue, red-trimmed letters across his chest like the grit of how he plays the game.

His teammates, who recently elected Yahn as a captain for the 2017 season, have grown accustomed to the superstitions that characterize the junior hot corner player.

“It’s weird seeing Willy without a long sleeve whenever we’re doing baseball activities and even when we’re doing lifts, too,” said senior second baseman and co-captain Aaron Hill. “Willy with the long sleeve shirt, Willy with the long hair and the crusty hat, that’s Willy.”

Yahn’s exaggerated  baseball character seems to be a total contradiction of his comparatively small (5-11) physical stature. Yet contradictions have defined his life even before stepping foot on UConn’s J.O. Christian Field.

He grew up in Sharon, a small forested town nestled in the northwest corner of the Nutmeg State.

“I went to a high school with six towns put together and graduated with 85 kids,” Yahn said. “I came to UConn because I wanted to mix it up, and instead of seeing one or two new faces every day, see thousands of new faces every day.”

Yet even with these small town beginnings, Yahn made the most out of his experience at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. He won numerous conference and state awards during four years of varsity baseball, the final two of which he struck out over 200 batters on the mound, while striking out just twice himself en route to hitting .662 as a junior and .590 as a senior.

Yahn found athletic and academic success away from the baseball diamond as well. He started in goal all four years for Housatonic’s soccer team, earned a pair of All-State nods, and graduated with honors. His high-flying act on the pitch has continued in college baseball.

“That was one of the biggest things I learned being where I’m from,” Yahn said. “You have to have fun and make the most of what you have, so I always tried to do that with baseball and other parts of my life.”

Now Yahn has taken that same attitude and applied it to his continued development in a highly regarded NCAA Division I baseball program, and in his studies as a journalism major.

His dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“Willy really loves baseball. That sounds funny because he’s a baseball player, but he can’t get enough of it,” Huskies head coach Jim Penders said. “He has unbelievable drive and determination. I think that’s ultimately why he was selected captain. They see those attributes to him.”

What is visible to opposing teams is Yahn, the man of many superstitions. Dig past the uniform dirt, and you see Yahn, the teammate.

“If you’re down, you go to Willy,” Hill said. “He picks you up. He’s always cracking jokes, just always having a good time.”

Yahn’s positive energy is contagious in the Husky dugout, and undoubtedly the overarching reason he was elected captain.

“He’s the same guy whether we’re up 4-0, down 4-0, or it’s tied 4-4 in the ninth inning,” Penders said. “And our guys recognize that.”

This season, Yahn has the opportunity to flourish as a leader on the diamond. He’ll continue to build on the draft stock he established when he was named a Louisville Slugger Freshman All-American.

Penders compared the professional prospects of Willy Yahn to that of Arizona Diamondbacks shortstop Nick Ahmed: a Husky who didn’t truly stand out to Major League scouts until late in his college career, unlike the more flashy talents of former UConn players outfielder George Springer, now with the Houston Astros, and pitcher Anthony Kay, drafted early in 2016 by the New York Mets.

Yahn’s prospects strengthened by competing in the Cape Cod League, which features some of the top college baseball players in the country. He achieved his success there with a broken bone in his hand—a circumstance that would sideline an average ball player. Yahn, however, is anything but average.

He continued to put team before self as he delayed his necessary surgery until the end of Fall Ball in Storrs. Despite the injury he was named a League All-Star.

“Him being there really made a difference, especially for our young guys getting acclimated with the program,” Penders said.

The Huskies won the American Athletic Conference this year. If history serves any precedent, Yahn along with his long sleeves and lucky cap will take the field in Port St. Lucie, Florida on Feb. 17, 2017, ready to take on the River Hawks of UMass Lowell, his best baseball still ahead of him.

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