The two steps Logan Oetting took toward his team’s sideline before collapsing could easily have been his last in a football uniform. Doctors would later tell his parents they could have been the last steps of his young life.
Midway through his eighth-grade season in Meigs County’s youth league, Oetting was kicked in the head by an opponent while he was on the ground. The force of the blow was so severe that it cracked the C2 vertebrae in the 14-year old’s neck, and although he got up and tried to walk off the field, he managed just two steps before passing out.
Oetting spent the next four months in a neck brace and was unable to attend school because of the concussion’s effects, which included sensitivity to light and persistent migraines. An MRI later revealed a cyst on Oetting’s brain, and the combination of that discovery and the neck injury led the family’s neurologist to inform them his football career was likely over.
The teenager was inconsolable.
“Not being able to be a part of the team affected him quite a bit,” said Oetting’s mother, Brittany. “He was depressed, and nothing seemed to cheer him up other than when the neurologist told him if his neck healed completely, he might be cleared to play again.