Would he live or die? No one knew. Basketball player's miraculous comeback 'best gift ever.'

FORT WAYNE – He always texted back.

That was the first indication something was wrong on the night of Nov. 18. Annette Bond asked her son, Homestead senior Will Jamison, to pick up his 15-year-old sister Rilynn from a birthday party. Will, out to eat with his basketball teammates at Buffalo Wild Wings after watching Homestead’s girls basketball team host Noblesville, quickly responded that he would.

Annette texted again at 9:40 p.m. “Have you got her yet?” Five or six minutes later, she texted again. The messages were unread. “I could feel something was wrong,” Annette said. “It wasn’t like him.” Fearing the worst and praying for the best, she called Will. No answer. She called again. No answer.

A second or two passed. Her phone buzzed. The call was from the police, not her son. “There was an accident,” Annette heard on the other end of the phone. The 6-minute drive from home to Lutheran Hospital was the longest of her life.

“It was fear,” she said of the drive. “Sadness. I wanted to get there to see they were both OK. I started to cry, then got myself back together and said, ‘I can’t do that.’”

Will was on one side of the hospital. Rilynn on the other. Annette was told by the Indiana State Police the car Will was driving was struck as it was traveling east on Horman Road by a vehicle traveling south on U.S. 27. Will’s side of the car took the brunt of the collision. Rilynn was confused and did not know where she was, but otherwise doctors believed she would be OK.

Will headed into surgery. His diaphragm ruptured and lungs collapsed in the accident. Miraculously, he did not suffer any broken bones. But the internal injuries were worrisome. Even after a four-hour surgery, it was unclear if Will was going to survive.

“They couldn’t tell me what the outcome would be,” Annette said, “because they didn’t know. I tried to hold it together and let Rilynn know everything was fine.”

Word of Will’s accident spread quickly on that Saturday night and into Sunday morning. Earlier that day, Homestead had played its preseason scrimmage against defending Class 3A state champion NorthWood. The season opener at Huntington North was just four days away. Will, the team’s point guard and returning leading scorer (he averaged 18.3 points per game as a junior), was in intensive care, fighting for his life.

The next morning, as Homestead’s players dropped by the school to referee youth league games, there were rumors (started by misleading websites on social media) Will had died.

“‘Is that true, is that not true?’” Homestead coach Chris Johnson said of the confusion that morning. “Obviously the family’s worried about taking care of the family, not getting the message out to us. We had to make phone calls to see if that was the case.”

The surgery was successful, but doctors still worried about Will’s breathing. There were 42 staples starting from his chest to his hypogastric region from the surgery to get his lungs and stomach into the correct place. He was placed on a breathing tube and under heavy sedation. Doctors told Annette they would monitor how his body would heal.

The next morning at the school, Johnson told the team Jamison’s situation.

“I didn’t really believe it at first,” said Homestead senior Alex Graber, Will’s teammate since seventh grade. “It was kind of a shock. All of us were in shock.”

A quick recovery

Annette, a sixth-grade math teacher at Miami Middle School in Fort Wayne, kept vigil at Lutheran Hospital. She would go home to take showers, then return. She Googled information she was not getting from the hospital. Four days after surgery, Will was breathing through the tube but still not waking up. The team came to the hospital to visit and his oldest siblings, sister Amber, 30, and Damion, 28, flew in from their homes in California to be with the family.

“Eventually I had a meeting with management (at the hospital),” Annette said. “‘I said, ‘I just need to know if it’s good or bad.’ But it was because they didn’t have any answers. They didn’t know.”

Then one night, about eight or nine days after the accident, Annette was praying at Will’s bedside when he “kind of just popped up.” He removed his breathing tube and catheter and tried to get out of bed. He eventually had to be strapped down as his breathing tube was reattached.

But this was a turning point.

“I knew at that point,” Annette said, “that there was no way he wasn’t going to get up. He was fighting in there.”

A couple of days later, Will opened his eyes and started moving his fingers like he wanted to type. He wrote the word “What.” Annette told him what happened. He wrote “Rilynn.” She had returned to the hospital after it was discovered she had a concussion, Annette told him, but she was fine. Will still was not able to talk due to the diaphragm injury, but they continued like this for a few days. He could signal “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” and ask questions on the tablet.

“He started getting stronger, staying up longer,” Annette said.

Will was moved off the breathing tube and was scheduled to move to Indianapolis for in-person rehabilitation. But that plan was scratched when Will dribbled a basketball down the hallway of the ICU. “He was strong,” Annette said.

On Dec. 5, just 17 days after the accident, Will was released from the hospital. His first stop? The Homestead gym. A video that now has more than 71,000 views on Twitter shows Jamison, still wearing his winter coat, draining a 3-pointer from the top of the key.

“My family didn’t know for probably six days if I was going to live or not,” Will said. “So that felt pretty good.”

Will had even bigger plans in mind.

A return to the basketball court

Will lost almost 30 pounds from his 190-pound frame during his time in the hospital. Johnson, looking back now, said he had zero expectation Will would return to the team at any point.

“We were just hopeful he was going to survive it,” Johnson said. “We wanted him to get through it and lead a productive life. He came up here right after he got out of the hospital and made that first shot he took. Still at that point in time, never in my wildest dreams did I think he would come back to play.”

Will saw a chance. He had a timeline. “As fast as possible,” he said with a laugh. Will worked at his rehab appointments at gaining endurance and strength. Due to his surgery, he was not able to do core strength work for a few weeks. But he could feel his body recovering.

He was cleared for shooting work and non-contact drills. On Jan. 29, he was allowed to fully return to practice.

“I thought, ‘Why me’ a lot early on,” Will said. “Every game I went to, I’d be mad if we lost. It would make me frustrated because I couldn’t be out there. My mom would help me through it. She’d tell me, ‘God has a plan’ and ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ I just tried to think about that.”

The day finally came. Feb. 5. Jamison was cleared to play the next night at Fort Wayne Wayne. He entered the game off the bench in the first quarter to a standing ovation. On his first shot, he came off a screen from Graber, who had prayed next to him in the hospital two months earlier, and drained a perfect 15-footer to roars from the crowd.

On the way back down the court, Graber waved his arms. Jamison smiled. Maybe the biggest, most fulfilling smile of his life. The Homestead crowd cheered. So did the fans from Wayne.

“I didn’t even think about it being my first shot,” he said. “I knew I scored but I forgot it was my first shot. It felt good. The place kind of erupted. It felt like I’m back, kind of.”

He is getting there. He scored eight, seven and 12 points in his first three games back. Then on Friday, in a 67-61 loss to Carroll, Will scored 26 points.

Homestead is 12-11 going into Friday’s final home game vs. Norwell. Though Wayne (18-3) will be the sectional favorite next week, Homestead is hosting Sectional 6 and clearly a different team with Jamison in the lineup.

“You can see him getting stronger,” Johnson said. “He’s one kid who can create his own shot and set up shooters. He’s getting better, getting stronger. He has more stamina. He’s a big part of getting us where we hope to get.”

Of course, just being here at all is a victory. But to be back on the basketball court, confident and in control, is almost a miracle that seems beyond belief.

“Just to see him survive is the best gift ever,” Annette said. “To see him play out there and do what he (does) gives me pure happiness. It makes me so proud of him to know he kept fighting and fighting. It wasn’t an easy road. But he never said a bad word.”

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IHSAA basketball: Homestead senior back from life-threating injuries