Bum knee won’t keep TE down
An old-school mentality doesn’t always mean an athlete from 40 to 50 years ago. University of Arkansas tight end commitment Dax Courtney is a modern-day version of old school.
Courtney, 6-6, 212 pounds, of DeWitt tore his medial patellofemoral ligament of the right knee in half during practice in the third week of the season.
“He stepped out to block and his right knee dislocated the knee cap,” said his father
Mark Courtney, who was the Dragons’ head coach this past season. “It’s the ligament that kind of holds your knee cap in place.”
Surgery seemed to be the most logical next step and would involve using a hamstring graft to reattach the ligament.
“One option was to have surgery with a 6-8 week rehab and likelihood of missing the rest of the season,” the elder Courtney said.
Dax wasn’t concerned about the injury and had plans to get back on the field.
“When it happened, I was like, ‘Oh this isn’t going to keep me down long’,” he said.
The Courtneys made a trip to see an orthopedic surgeon in Jonesboro.
“They’re thinking, ‘Oh, he has a torn ligament. He’s probably out for the season,’ ” Dax said. “I’m thinking, ‘Oh, as soon as the swelling goes down, I can get back on to the field.’ It’s the way I looked at it. I wasn’t going to let something like that end my season.”
After taking two weeks off to allow the swelling to go down, Courtney was back on the field with his knee heavily wrapped to keep the knee cap in place.
“He played the rest of the year,” Mark said. “It would swell and hurt and all that but he wanted to play with his buddies.”
A big part of his motivation to play with the injury was his teammates whom he refers as his brothers.
“You have a lot of sweat and tears and everything built together with that team and they’ve given you all their effort,” Dax said. “So I wanted to give them as much effort as I could give them and give them a reason to when they got hurt they would keep playing.
“I just love to play and compete, you just gotta play sometimes with no regard for your own body.”
The younger Courtney pledged to the Hogs over scholarship offers from Baylor, TCU, Penn State, Michigan State, Purdue, Kansas, Kansas State, Vanderbilt and others.
With the season complete, surgery was set for Feb. 4. A few days before the procedure, Razorback Coach Sam Pittman reassured Dax and his father about his commitment.
“He said one of three things will happen,” Mark said. “You’re going to go and they’re going to say keep rehabbing. They’ll do surgery and they’ll fix it. Or they’ll come out and say you’ll never play again. He said just to put your mind at ease [that] no matter what out of those three circumstances, he said you’re a Razorback. He said we will honor what we offered you no matter what.”
Mark held Pittman in high regard, but he feels more so after being told the Hogs would honor his son’s scholarship regardless of the outcome of his injury.
“I already thought pretty dang high of him,” Courtney said.
Dax felt Pittman was a very sincere man but reassurances from the Arkansas coach “really boosted him up in my book.”
“He was highly thought of before obviously because I’m going to give my next four years of my life to him but when he told me that, it was a lot of relief because going into surgery I was thinking alright I have to get healthy because I want my schooling paid for and I want to go play for the Razorbacks but when he told me that it was a game changer,” Courtney said.
The rehabbing process will be several months, but his knee won’t be fully healed until about a year from now.
“They said the rehab is four to seven months but almost a year before you’re back to 100%,” Courtney said. “You’re suppose to be able to play in four to seven months but 100% is one full year.”