Rutgers Looking to Overcome Tragic Eric LeGrand Injury

As Eric LeGrand lay motionless on the New Meadowlands turf for seven minutes in last Saturday’s Rutgers—Army college football game, everyone watching feared the worst.
Rutgers Looking to Overcome Tragic Eric LeGrand Injury
10/19/2010
Updated:
10/21/2010

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/LeGrandGo_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/LeGrandGo_medium.jpg" alt="Eric LeGrand would never let a bad practice go. He loved being out there on the field. LeGrand is shown here in this summer's training camp. (Matt Sugam/The Epoch Times)" title="Eric LeGrand would never let a bad practice go. He loved being out there on the field. LeGrand is shown here in this summer's training camp. (Matt Sugam/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-114330"/></a>
Eric LeGrand would never let a bad practice go. He loved being out there on the field. LeGrand is shown here in this summer's training camp. (Matt Sugam/The Epoch Times)
PISCATAWAY, N.J.—As Eric LeGrand lay motionless on the New Meadowlands turf for seven minutes in last Saturday’s Rutgers–Army football game, everyone watching feared the worst.

From the silence that followed a loud cheer for the jarring hit by LeGrand on Army’s Malcolm Brown to head coach Greg Schiano sprinting across the field at the heels of the team trainers, the cause for concern was clear.

A spinal cord injury.

It’s the event every football player knows can happen in the back of their minds—the threat they face every time they buckle their chinstrap.

LeGrand now faces the tragic reality of that happening.

The 20-year-old has a tougher path ahead of him than anything that’s ever occurred on the football field as he lies in a hospital bed in intensive care unit of the Hackensack University Medical Center paralyzed from the neck down. The injury suffered was a fracture of the third and fourth vertebrae of the spine.

Losing a Leader

LeGrand was a leader on and off the field for the Scarlet Knights and an emotional sparkplug. The junior’s been member of the team’s leadership council—second only to a team captain—for the past two seasons.

His injury has left his teammates distraught over their fallen comrade.

It’s difficult to describe the type of kid LeGrand is in a few words. Fellow defensive lineman Charlie Noonan tried to do so and was even able to crack a small smile on a somber day of meeting with the media on Monday when talking about his friend.

“Eric has a presence to him,” Noonan said. “His smile, as soon as he walks into a room, he can light a room up. He’s just a hard worker. He’s just—I don’t have any sisters—but he’s just the kind of kid you'd want your sister to date. He’s just a really good guy.”

To say his smile lights up the room may not even do LeGrand justice. Even on the toughest of days on the field, he’d have that pearly white grin on his face.

“He was the guy that would not allow a bad practice to go,” Schiano said in his teleconference last Sunday. “He just had that way about him, had that smile about him out on the practice field that he could make you laugh by just smiling at you, which is a rarity out on the practice field.

“He is a special guy, and as I talked to the team about it, a guy who really loves to play the game. I think a lot of people like it a lot, but this kid loves it, everything about it. To being in the locker room, to practicing, to games, to the night before the game, and I think he’s a great teammate.”

F.A.M.I.L.Y. and Keep Choppin’


Much of what’s next for LeGrand is unknown. What is known is that for him to get through this—and one day walk again—the Avenel, N.J. native will have to have to lean on two main things he learned as a Rutgers football player:

F.A.M.I.L.Y. and keep choppin’.

The F.A.M.I.L.Y. acronym is something Schiano has made a staple for those a part of the program.

It’s posted all around the football facilities. From the student trainers to Schiano, and everyone in between, black wristbands are worn with the acronym as a constant reminder of what the team is and stands for.

“Forget about me, I love you.”

Through that saying, the team’s become a family. So it’s more than just a teammate that went down.

“We’re so close. You don’t think something like this will happen and it happens to one of your teammates, and for us one of our family members, it hurts,” linebacker Antonio Lowery said. “That’s why it’s a bond from day one. Once you first get here that’s what we learn, that this is a family and we have to stay together.”

Lowery has yet to see LeGrand as Schiano didn’t want to overwhelm the 6-foot-2-inch 275-pound defensive tackle as he recovers and needs rest. The head coach has set up a rotation for the players to go visit.

Lowery is unsure exactly what he’ll say to LeGrand. What he does know is he’ll be there for his brother.

“Just him being a brother, I don’t know what I can say to him except back him up and keep him positive,” Lowery said.

LeGrand’s roommate Khaseem Greene was one of the few players who have already been to see him. The experience was difficult, but necessary.

“You don’t want to see your brother like that,” Greene said. “But at the same time I think I needed that. And the couple guys that went up there we needed that.”

While there’s nothing Greene can do for LeGrand physically, he did the only thing a brother could do.

“I just told him I loved him and to stay strong,” Greene said. “He’s a strong kid and he’s a fighter. We believe in him.”
<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/DSC_0238_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/DSC_0238_medium.jpg" alt="Eric LeGrand had to be stretchered off in the fourth quarter of Rutgers' win over Army on Saturday. Teammate Scott Vallone looks on with concern. (Kyle Franko/NewJerseyNewsRoom.com)" title="Eric LeGrand had to be stretchered off in the fourth quarter of Rutgers' win over Army on Saturday. Teammate Scott Vallone looks on with concern. (Kyle Franko/NewJerseyNewsRoom.com)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-114331"/></a>
Eric LeGrand had to be stretchered off in the fourth quarter of Rutgers' win over Army on Saturday. Teammate Scott Vallone looks on with concern. (Kyle Franko/NewJerseyNewsRoom.com)

Fellow defensive tackle Scott Vallone—and one of LeGrand’s best friends—also went to see his fallen teammate.

“I told him that I loved him and he acknowledge that I was there,” Vallone said. “He could tell I was there. His eyes opened up pretty wide when I saw him. It was good. He’s going to make it, I know his personality.”

For Eric to recover, he’ll have to maintain that keep choppin’ mentality, which Schiano uses to emphasize staying in the moment.

In football, that’s putting the previous play behind you and not thinking about potential plays in the future, just the next one. Chopping is about focusing on the task at hand. Doing one’s job and never letting up, regardless of the situation.

It’s about chopping the moment.

LeGrand can’t think about how or why this horrific injury has happened to him. And he can’t think about how difficult the long journey ahead will be. Not when he has to try and wiggle his toes before he can even think about walking.

As for the team, they have to try to refocus on the sport that’s left their brother with no movement below his neck and play a game against Pittsburgh on Saturday.

“We’re going to hold it together because this is something dear to us,” Noonan said. “Eric is such a good friend of mine. Everybody likes Eric, and we’re going to do it in the way he would like it to be done.

“He’s such a football guy in everything he does. He just loves the game of football and he would want us to do it, to go out [and play]. He would not want us to be around here in a funk. This is what we’re about to do and we’re going to approach this Pitt game like every other game, like a one-game season.”

Tune in every Friday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. EDT on WRSU-FM as Matt Sugam co-hosts Scarlet Football Fever discussing Rutgers football as well as the N.Y. Jets and Giants.