Gillespie's Jesse Berry 'happy' and 'lucky' to be back on the field after two ACL tears

He entered the week hitting .442 and batting cleanup for a 22-7 Gillespie baseball team favored to go far again in the Class 2A state tournament. He’s headed for Lewis & Clark Community College in Godfrey this fall, already sure of what he wants to do in the future. Life for 17-year-old Jesse Berry right now is good.

Unlike the fall of 2022, when, as a junior, the same right knee he’d rehabbed for six months because of a torn ACL became torn again on his very first carry for the Miners football team. One carry, minus-5 yards. Those are Berry’s statistics from his junior season as a halfback. Life at that moment became full of depression, anger and resignation.

“I lost all hope,” Berry said. “I just thought to myself, ‘You’ll never play any sport again. You better start thinking about what you’ll do the rest of your life, but it won’t include sports.’ It was definitely the most challenging thing I’ve ever gone through.”

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Berry, from a football family with an older brother who starred for the Miners, dreamed of playing college ball somewhere. At 6-foot, 170 pounds, Berry had great speed and excellent hand-eye coordination. Now, he had a twice-torn ACL in his right knee, with six more grueling months of rehab ahead.

But this time, Berry was given a different surgical technique than the first one. It involved taking tendons from his quadriceps, instead of his meniscus. Berry felt much better after the second surgery than the first and started to feel some hope again. He used Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, who overcame a serious knee injury, as a role model.

“You could see that he was getting better much quicker than before,” said Berry’s mother, LaVonne. “He wore a brace, too, and he was able to get around much better.”

Fast forward to his senior year, and Berry not only is a star on the baseball team but was able to play nine games for the football team. He played as a receiver and caught 172 yards’ worth of passes, and also played safety.

“I didn’t play as much as I wanted to, but it still felt really good being on the field again,” Berry said. “I owe my friends, parents and coaches a lot for helping me get there.”

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Even though baseball is his second favorite sport, he’s become a fearsome presence in the Miners’ lineup.

After all the disappointment of his sophomore and junior years, there is still a chance Berry could graduate from Gillespie with a state championship ring.

“It’s kind of remarkable he’s as athletic as he is,” Miners baseball coach Jeremy Smith said. “He’s kind of taken on a role as a leader for us, kind of a quiet one who leads by example. But, on the field, he leads with his play.”

Berry, the starting right fielder, believes the Miners can benefit from the experience of going 32-0 last year before losing the Class 2A Pleasant Plains Sectional championship game against Quincy Notre Dame. It was the furthest the Miners had gotten in the postseason since 2002.

“We’re a close team, a tough team,” Berry said. “If we play like we can, we can go far again in the postseason.”

After what he went through with his knee, Berry for a while wanted to give back in his own way by being a physical therapist for a career. But six years of schooling to get that done became less appealing the more he thought about it.

Now, at Lewis and Clark, he plans on studying to become an industrial electrician. He said he won’t play any sport there.

“But that’s OK. It is what it is and I’m happy again. I’m lucky I got to play at all my senior year. At one time, it seemed like a fantasy that could ever happen,” Berry said.

Adrian Dater is a freelance writer for The State Journal-Register. He can be reached through the sports department at sports@sj-r.com.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: IHSA baseball: Jesse Berry leads by example after overcoming ACL tears