Collegiate Sports

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Part of Vermont’s N.C.A.A. Team and Hoping, One Day, to Be Able to Play
By PAT BORZIMARCH 16, 2017

MILWAUKEE — Josh Speidel was late. This happens a lot with Speidel, a redshirt freshman for the University of Vermont, who can be forgetful. The Catamounts coach, John Becker, flagged down Speidel in the breakfast room at the team hotel Wednesday morning, and moments later Speidel limped into the lobby and sat down for an interview, his left hand clamped on a right arm that refused to be still.

This is the player that Becker first saw as a strapping 16-year-old on an Amateur Athletic Union team in Indiana, the one who reminded him of the Notre Dame power forward Luke Harangody. Same build. Same buzz-cut. A little overweight, but so what? Speidel could score and rebound. Halfway through his senior year at Columbus North High School, the 6-foot-7 Speidel owned the school’s career scoring and rebounding marks.

“You could tell he was going to be really good,” Becker said. “He had a determination about him.”

And he is the same Speidel whom Becker saw lying in a hospital bed 25 months ago, in a coma, his skull fractured and his left side paralyzed.

Speidel had already committed to Vermont when a sport utility vehicle struck his 1999 Honda Accord on Feb. 1, 2015, as he pulled out of a fast-food drive-through. All the others involved in the accident — a teenage girl in his car, an adult driver and two children in the other — had only minor injuries or none at all. But Speidel’s head slammed into the door frame, severely injuring his brain.

He remained in a coma for more than four weeks. When he awoke, he remembered nothing of the accident, nor of his senior year in high school. He needed to relearn how to walk, speak and use his left arm. Six weeks after returning home, another complication surfaced — uncontrollable tremors in his right arm that have not gone away.

“Doctors are still trying to find the right meds,” he said.

Two days after the accident, Becker visited Speidel at an Indianapolis hospital. He promised Speidel’s parents, David and Lisa, that he would honor Vermont’s scholarship offer. “It never was a question to me,” he said.

On Thursday night, Speidel was on the Catamounts bench when Vermont (29-6), the No. 13 seed, fell to fourth-seeded Purdue (26-7), 80-70, in an N.C.A.A. Midwest Region first-round game in Milwaukee. The Speidels said this week that they would make the five and a half-hour drive from northern Indiana for the game, even though Josh could not play. It’s possible he may never suit up for the Catamounts, unless the tremors abate or can be controlled by medication.

But Speidel and his parents are hopeful. They say he has already come further than his doctors expected. A few weeks ago, Speidel began running, shadowing his teammates on the adjacent court at Patrick Gym on campus. His teammates often stop and cheer him on. Speidel’s body may be weakened, but not his feistiness.

“I let them win now just to feel good about themselves,” Speidel said. “Hopefully, with more training, and soon, I’ll be up there competing with them.”

Said Becker: “It’s been a long road for him. I’m sure he expected to be further along at this point, but it hasn’t deterred him from continuing to try to get better.”

The Catamounts went 16-0 in the America East Conference this season, and they entered Thursday on a 21-game winning streak, the longest in the country. When Purdue beat the Catamounts, 107-79, last season in West Lafayette, Ind., Speidel attended the game and was introduced before it began. The Mackey Arena crowd applauded him warmly.

“That’s why its kind of cool to be able to play Purdue in the first round,” he said on Wednesday. “Just knowing what they did for me last year, and knowing some players on the team, I’m very exited to play them.”

The accident happened on Super Bowl Sunday. Speidel was home watching the game with his parents when he announced that he was heading to Columbus North to put up some shots and grab something to eat. He had a key to the gym, “which was typical,” said his mother, Lisa Speidel, an assistant principal at an elementary school in Seymour, Ind.

A little while later, an unknown number registered on their home telephone’s caller ID. “We’re like, who’s this calling on Super Bowl Sunday? Why are we getting marketing calls?” she said. “A few minutes later, there was a call from our local hospital, Columbus Regional, and we knew something had happened.”

It took 10 weeks for Speidel to say his first word: Mom. He spent 117 days in three medical facilities before returning home, in a wheelchair. By late summer 2015, he could walk only a few steps when the Seymour Schools superintendent, Robert Hooker, approached Lisa with a novel idea: He would hire Josh as an instructional assistant.

He started in a fourth-grade classroom midway through the fall semester, a couple of hours a week. He helped some children with homework and read to others, one or two at a time.

“His speech sometimes was inaudible,” his mother said. “As the year went along, the students were amazing and just kind of wrapped him up.”

Josh’s clever solution to math problems helped several kids grasp a difficult concept. Being mentally engaged led to other gains. By the time Josh left in May, he was out of the wheelchair and walking on his own.

“I loved that time, and I’m very thankful that mom’s school allowed me to do that,” he said. “Those kids and those teachers I worked with, I don’t know if they know, but they’re a big reason why I was able to do stuff physically and cognitively. They helped me in my recovery process.”

In the fall, Speidel enrolled at Vermont. Though his short-term memory occasionally fails him, he manages classes with the help of an academic adviser.

Many mornings, Becker sits in his office at Patrick Gym and hears the sound of a bouncing basketball from the court down the hall. It’s Speidel, putting up shots, imagining himself as his favorite player, Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks. If Speidel never plays for the Catamounts, it won’t be from lack of diligence.

“He’s a hard worker, and a person to believe in and trust,” said the sophomore guard Everett Duncan, Speidel’s roommate. “Everyone’s encouraging him.

“He called me last week and said, ‘I need a new goal.’ Now his goal is touching the bottom of the backboard with both hands. He’s really progressing.”

On Wednesday, Speidel watched Vermont’s late-afternoon practice from the sidelines at the Bradley Center. For the moment, his right arm cooperated. He held a basketball in his left hand and dribbled occasionally, once bouncing it smoothly between his legs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/sports/ncaabasketball/speidel-vermont-basketball.html?