Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Stronger than ever
Siloam Springs’ Ellis back on field after second ACL tear.
SILOAM SPRINGS — Landon Ellis knows way more about his left knee than he’d like to. And he’s got the scars to prove it.
Ellis, a senior quarterback at Siloam Springs, has torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee twice in his high school career.
The first ACL tear happened just days before the start of his freshman football season in 2015, while the most recent instance occurred last October in El Dorado in the Panthers’ eighth game of the season. The injury caused him to miss the final two football games and most of the baseball season.
Heading into the 2018 football season, Ellis (5-foot-10, 174 pounds) is back on the field for the Panthers, who open their season today at Pryor, Okla., and he’s determined to be part of the culture change around Siloam Springs football, which is under first-year coach Brandon Craig.
“I feel great,” Ellis said. “My knee’s probably the best it’s ever been. It feels stronger than ever. I can tell by the way I run, and the lifts I can do that it’s gotten stronger.”
Ellis, who goes by L.T., was a standout athlete coming up through the Panthers’ junior high program as a seventh- and eighth-grader, but he missed all of his freshman season with the torn ACL.
“T is for Trey, my middle name,” Ellis said. “Growing up playing baseball, there was a kid I played with named Landon, too, and it was easier for me to go by L.T. to stop the confusion. Then it just kind of stuck.”
As a sophomore, he found his way onto the field in a few games in 2016, when thenPanthers starting quarterback Luke Lampton went out with an injury.
Ellis wound up completing 9 of 27 passes for 109 yards and two interceptions as a sophomore while also quarterbacking the junior varsity team.
As a junior, the Panthers put the ball in Ellis’ hands, and he showed early that he could be a playmaker with his arm.
He threw for a season-high 312 yards and three touchdowns in a 35-21 win against Van Buren and then followed up with a four-touchdown, 244-yard night in a 31-24 win at Sheridan, the Panthers’ only two wins of 2017.
Overall, he completed 97 of 199 passes for 1,563 yards, 11 touchdowns and six interceptions.
But his junior season came to a halt at El Dorado when he went down with his second ACL tear — and a torn meniscus — in the first half. Ellis left the game after being sacked, but he thinks the injury occurred on the play before.
“I rolled out and when I went to throw (the ball) away, I planted and (the left knee) just gave way,” he said. “I felt it. It was the same feeling as the first time. I knew what happened. I tried to get back in, but I couldn’t. There was no way I could get back in.”
Craig, who came to Siloam Springs after a successful tenure at Oologah, Okla., has dealt with his share of athletes and ACL tears.
He admires the toughness that Ellis has shown while overcoming his obstacles.
“It’s a mindset,” Craig said. “If you really want to overcome that and come back, you’re going to have to work really hard. That does take a lot of mental toughness. It takes a lot of discipline outside, doing your therapy and things like that on your own. Tons of mental toughness, tons of time, and you have to work really hard to get back to 100 percent and have that confidence that you can do everything that you were doing before.”
Ellis had his ACL repaired a few weeks after the Panthers finished the 2017 season 2-8, prompting former coach Bryan Ross to resign after nine seasons.
Ellis said he struggled mentally with the injury initially.
“Before, when I tore it the first time, I didn’t even know what an ACL was,” Ellis said. “I didn’t even know what it did for your knee or anything. … Then when I tore it junior year, I was like, I don’t know if I should still be playing football. Being out for a year total for two ACL surgeries, and that’s football and baseball season right there, it’s tough.”
Ellis had plenty of motivation to get back on the field.
“My teammates,” he said, “because I knew they were all relying on me, and I couldn’t give up on them, especially with the new coach coming in. I didn’t want to leave them empty-handed our senior year. We’ve been playing together since we were in sixth grade. I can’t just leave them out in the open.”
“If you really want to overcome that and come back, you’re going to have to work really hard.”
— Siloam Springs football coach Brandon Craig