Kyle Pugh remembers the play that might turn out to be simply the primary leg of an odyssey of repeated heartbreaks, solely he didn’t comprehend it on the time.
The Northern Illinois linebacker was making an attempt to deal with then-San Diego State working again Rashaad Penny within the fourth quarter of a street recreation on Sept. 30, 2017, when he tore his left biceps.
“Yeah, that Rashaad Penny,” Pugh instructed the Tribune.
“Just shot an open gap and went for a routine tackle. And my forearm hit the runner’s leg, kind of hyperextending my elbow so it ruptured my bicep tendon at the elbow,” he stated. It felt “like a rubber band pop.”
Today, Penny is a fifth-year Seattle Seahawks working again who featured prominently in Monday evening’s primetime showdown in opposition to the Denver Broncos.
Pugh, 25, continues to be a member of the identical Huskies 5 years later.
In truth, when Pugh suited up Sept. 1 in opposition to Eastern Illinois, it represented the beginning of his eighth and ultimate season of school eligibility, barring some medical calamity.
And Pugh is all too conversant in calamity.
After all, how does somebody make it to eight seasons of school soccer?
Four accidents, two redshirts, two levels (and a grasp’s to come back), a “free” COVID-19 season and a single-mindedness that Pugh wasn’t even positive he had.
“No part of me would have been OK with it,” Pugh stated concerning the prospect not ending his eligibility.
He’s a part of a uncommon membership of which he’d fairly not be a member. There have been a handful of seventh-year student-athletes, however reportedly none had been granted an eighth yr by the NCAA besides East Tennessee State linebacker Jared Folks.
In Pugh’s case, “he’s definitely shown resilience and determination,” Huskies linebackers coach Robert Wimberly instructed the Tribune. “To know that he’s been in college for eight years, to have an opportunity to play his final year is definitely admirable.”
Like his fellow “super seniors,” Pugh has his causes for sticking round.
“I have put so much into the game of football and proven that I can play at a high level,” he stated. “But I’ve never been able to do it for as long as I wanted to. So if I had to walk away with that feeling, it would definitely be a disappointment.”
It all began with such optimism.
Pugh grew up in Chicago Heights believing Ray Lewis was “just the best to do it.” And Pugh made his personal mark at Bloom Township, recording 112 tackles and making the All-Southland Conference crew throughout his senior yr in 2014.
Pugh stated he got here near receiving 15 Division I presents, together with Nevada, Indiana and Northwestern.
“I come from a pretty big family. I’m the youngest boy of 19 grandchildren,” he stated. “Staying close to home was important to me so that a lot of my family could travel to the games, at least for the home games.”
Pugh opted to attend NIU, which was “doing big things and I wanted to be a part of (it),” he stated, referring to NIU’s three Mid-American Conference championships in a four-year interval, together with 2014.
Pugh redshirted as a freshman in 2015 as a result of there have been upperclassmen forward of him on the depth chart. In 2016, he primarily performed particular groups in 10 video games.
In 2017, he burst out of the gate with 17 tackles and an interception within the season opener in opposition to Boston College, and had 35 tackles via 4 video games earlier than that fateful second in opposition to San Diego State.
That’s the place Pugh’s saga begins.
Sept. 30, 2017: The left biceps tear
When Pugh tore his left biceps, he stated he didn’t really feel a lot ache. In truth, he completed the sport.
“The doc just told me in the locker room afterwards what actually happened,” Pugh stated.
Pugh felt “disappointment. Confusion, I had got off to a really good start that year, and just to find out that I wasn’t going to be playing anymore, it was tough.”
Pugh missed the ultimate eight video games of the common season and the Quick Lane Bowl in opposition to Duke.
“It was definitely a time where I had to lean on my family,” he stated. “I was young and I hadn’t really been faced with that type of adversity before.”
Sept. 1, 2018: The proper shoulder tear
When coach Heath Duncan arrived in DeKalb within the spring of 2018, Pugh was doing effectively along with his rehab and had no points main as much as the season.
Then within the opener at Iowa, Pugh tore the labrum in his proper shoulder.
“The unique thing about (a labral tear) is it’s a pretty painful injury, especially at the linebacker position,” Duncan stated. “And it can be tough to kind of fight through.”
Pugh, nonetheless, performed in 13 video games that season, together with the Huskies’ tight MAC championship win in opposition to Buffalo, when Pugh made 9 tackles, and a Boca Raton Bowl loss to Alabama-Birmingham, when Pugh had seven stops.
He had a career-best 106 tackles for the season and was named to the All-MAC second crew.
Pugh had surgical procedure that December, Duncan stated, in response to college information. More rehab adopted.
Sept. 7, 2019: The proper shoulder fracture
Disaster struck once more two video games into the 2019 season in opposition to Utah when he broke the socket in the identical shoulder.
“I delivered a pretty hard hit and it was just a freak accident,” he stated.
That freak incidence — which “broke the coracoid process” and glenoid in his shoulder socket, Duncan stated — value Pugh the remainder of the season.
“Basically, you lose the ‘cup’ (in the shoulder socket),” Duncan stated. “So it’s like sitting a golf ball on a golf tee. And you would shatter a piece of that golf tee and then try and put the ball back, and it would just kind of roll off.”
Duncan stated Pugh had surgical procedure two weeks after the harm.
“It was like a six- to eight-month long process,” Pugh stated.
Here was yet one more restoration, so Pugh began to reevaluate routines he had taken with no consideration.
“I figured there was something with my training regimen or the way that I was eating or something like that that was making me more susceptible to injury,” he stated.
So he began “prehabbing,” he stated.
“I started to have a prepractice routine and pregame routine to make sure I was warmed up properly and ready to go,” he stated.
After that season, Pugh was granted a medical redshirt waiver that gave him an extra two seasons.
“I had to write a brief request to the NCAA for an extended career, just because of the time that I’ve spent on the sideline. It was only like a paragraph long,” Pugh stated. “And then should you add up (my video games, it) provides as much as in all probability a season and a half.
“I sent it in and I didn’t really know what to expect or how they were going to respond to it, but they ended up giving me two extra years, which explains why I’m here now.”
2020: No accidents — only a pandemic
COVID-19 shut down sports activities in March 2020 and it might be months earlier than many leagues would resume.
Because of the weird circumstances, the NCAA granted athletes an additional yr of eligibility whether or not they opted to play that fall or following winter, or not.
Pugh performed 5 video games, had 36 tackles and was chosen to the All-MAC third crew.
“No injuries that season,” he chimed in.
April 17, 2021: The proper ACL tear
But the clear invoice of well being wouldn’t final lengthy.
“I was fully cleared and ready to go to take on a full season,” Pugh stated, “and then in the last practice of spring ball I tore my ACL in a non-contact injury.”
Duncan stated Pugh additionally suffered meniscus injury as effectively.
“What happens is, you plant and then you’re stuck on that leg, and then you have some sort of twisting motion in the knee,” Duncan stated.
“The whole job of the ACL is to keep your shin bone from shifting. When that ACL goes, the bones will bounce into each other and that’s normally what causes some sort of meniscus tear.”
But Pugh additionally needed to fear concerning the psychological injury. He almost reached his breaking level.
Said Pugh: “The training staff was examining me (on the field) and there was a brief moment where I said, ‘You know, I don’t know if I can do this again.’”
Pugh stated that when he was alone he screamed in frustration.
But within the locker room, “I form of centered myself and understood that there’s one thing that my mother all the time instructed me once I was rising up, and it was that ‘God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers.’
“That’s one thing that each time any adversity confronts me that all the time performs in my head. And so I sat there emotional and every little thing like that, however I understood that if it was meant for me to surrender, I feel it might extra so coincide with me not having any extra time or if I didn’t love the sport as a lot anymore.
“But just because it was tough adversity, I didn’t have the option to quit.”
Pugh traveled to the Andrews Institute in Florida for his surgical procedure.
But rehab was completely different this time. He had hassle altering path and decelerating. His unconscious needed to regain confidence in his physique.
“(It’s) failing and trying again and re-accomplishing things and learning how to do certain things, dynamic movements,so it was definitely more a mental recovery than than the rest of my surgeries,” Pugh stated.
Duncan had watched Pugh navigate previous accidents and rehabs with hardly a phrase of grievance, however he knew this time one thing was off.
“It’s a very devastating thing to happen” Duncan stated. “This could be a fourth time that he’s going via this. So I feel there was some questioning in all probability internally of ‘What’s occurring? How do I keep wholesome? What’s the following step?’
“After (he) kind of got over that initial shock, he just went right back to work.”
2022: One ultimate season
Pugh stated his present teammates, a few of them as a lot as seven years his junior, have been supportive, however that doesn’t imply they don’t give him grief.
“Pretty much any song from the early 2000s … they’ll say, ‘Were you in high school when this came out?’” Pugh stated. “I hear it all. They call me grandpa.”
It’s not simply the scholars, both.
Said Duncan: “I don’t know if there’s a day that goes by when we’re taping him that we don’t throw a joke at him. … ‘How was it when NSYNC’s first album came out?’ … ‘Michael Jackson in his early days, when he was a kid? Like, how was that concert?’”
Wimberly stated he calls Pugh “Methuselah, the oldest man, according to the Bible.”
Duncan stated Pugh “just starts shaking his head and kind of laughs. I think he’s probably heard every joke you can hear about being old. It just rolls off at this point.”
Pugh throws some punchlines again if he’s in a joking temper, however even he admits there are some stark modifications in locker room tradition from when he first began.
“I’m still not on TikTok, I don’t really have the time,” Pugh stated. “I don’t know what the dance is that they’re doing and what’s going on, but it’s definitely different.”
But there’s respect there, too.
“To know the battles and things he’s had to overcome in his life through injuries to get to this point, you definitely have respect for what you’re trying to accomplish,” Wimberly stated.
“The younger men on the team respect him and look up to him, because he definitely has that other game experience. But just about the injuries that he’s had in his career, when young men maybe are nursing an injury or dealing with different situations, they can go to him. … And I think that’s what makes him special, because everybody sees what he’s had to overcome.’”
Pugh volunteers be the voice when gamers have to deal with points with coaches, however his institutional knowledge extends exterior the locker room.
“I don’t know, really, anybody who has been here longer than Kyle, from our coaching to operations to the athlete training staff,” Duncan stated.
Case in level, Pugh had 4 years underneath coach Rod Carey and is in his fourth yr underneath Thomas Hammock.
Pugh’s additionally had time to additional his training. He obtained an undergraduate diploma in kinesiology in 2019, a grasp’s in sports activities administration in 2020 and is on observe to earn a grasp’s in sports activities and train psychology in December.
Somewhere down the road, he needs to work with the psychological facet of sports activities and sports activities accidents. But these ultimate few months are about placing every little thing he has left into soccer. He nonetheless craves the prospect to excel on the sector and holds onto a dream of possibly listening to his identify known as by the NFL on draft day.
“He loves the film room. He’s a student of the game,” Wimberly stated.
Pugh stated he expects coaches will “save me reps” right here and there to assist protect him, however in any other case there have been no restrictions.
Whether or not there’s soccer in his long-term future, Pugh stated he has discovered via his religion and this complete saga that each expertise he goes via, good or unhealthy, is to his profit.
“One of the major things that I’ve learned is that the power of the mind is incredible,” Pugh stated. “This course of has been completely different for me this time round as a result of I’ve taken extra time to permit myself to be prepared mentally. I’ve all the time form of rushed again into issues and took all of the precautions to rehab myself again to well being bodily, however I by no means actually paid a lot thoughts to the psychological facet of it.
“There’s a heavy psychological a part of rehabilitation and there’s typically you should get into some meditation or optimistic self-talk and various things like that. I’ve taken the time to do this this time round. So there’s little question in my thoughts once I hit the sector once more that I’m 100% wholesome.
“And I’m going to stay that way.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com