NIC-10 football team thankful key two-way player still alive: 'Football becomes minimal'
Logan Schwartz drove his girlfriend home to Orangeville, dropped her off and gave her a good night hug.
And then woke up in a helicopter.
Freeport’s football team will be without its starting left tackle, who also helps out at several defensive positions, this year, but it will not be without a teammate. Freeport’s football family has rallied around Schwartz, who was severely injured in a car accident on July 21. Schwartz plans to do the same in response.
“We have such an amazing support system for him,” his mom, Missy Schwartz, said Wednesday night from the side of his hospital bed in Madison, Wisconsin. “Hundreds and hundreds of people are on Facebook praying and sending love. The football moms are doing T-shirts and bracelets for him.
“His determination and fight to get better is amazing. He’s going to have to do in-house rehab, but he’s already sitting up on the side of the bed. He’s eating. He’s laughing. He stood up today. Those are small strides, but we’re doing it. He’s a very strong man and he’s bound and determined to be on that field for every single game, even though he can’t play.”
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The Schwartz family is not even sure what happened. Only that it was a two-car accident on IL-26 near Cedarville and that the other driver was also hurt, but not as badly.
Schwartz’s car wound up in the yard of one of his mom’s co-workers. His mom got the call even before the police arrived. She got there in time to see emergency medical people cut the doors off to extract him from the car.
“I wasn’t concerned with talking to anybody,” His mom said. “I just wanted to be with him and know he was alive. I didn’t care what happened. The police report isn’t available yet and he doesn’t remember. He says he remembers dropping his girlfriend off, then hugging her and driving off and waking up in a helicopter.”
Schwartz underwent eight hours of surgery the next day. Doctors put in two plates and a screw to fix a broken pelvis. They inserted a rod to repair a broken femur. He broke his wrist but did not need surgery on that. He was put on bed rest — “he couldn’t walk anyway,” his mom said — because of a major spleen injury.
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Yet even before surgery, he wanted to call Anthony Dedmond, his head coach both for football and on the wrestling team.
“He said, ‘I’ve got to call my coach. I’ve got to apologize.’ Because he is not going to play football this year,” his mom said. “He was very upset.
“He’s tearing up right now. Football and wrestling are his identity. It’s so hard for him. But we have an amazing support system for him because of the family mentality on the team.”
The Schwartz family — and all their friends — are also extremely thankful that Logan has no brain damage. They expect him to fully recover and have established a GoFundMe site for him.
“You are just shocked,” Dedmond said of one of the key members of his offensive and defensive lines recovering in the hospital. “You are around these kids so much, when something happens, it’s like something happened to one of your own. Football becomes minimal. Life is the important thing.”
Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Community rallies around NIC-10 football player after bad car accident
