Fox Chapel bouncing back after challenging year
Fox Chapel did what most teams do and had a team meeting with returning players and potential candidates just prior to the start of practice.
Under normal circumstances, it’s an informal get-together with the coaches outlining team rules, goals, expectations and naming captains. Only these weren’t normal circumstances.
“It was a very humbling experience getting them in the same room and talking about golf again is refreshing to me compared to what we had to deal with in the fall,” Fox Chapel coach Bryan Deal said. “They need that strength among each other to get back doing what they love and that’s playing golf and being a part of a golf team and I’m proud of how they responded.”
On Oct. 11, the day before the WPIAL Class 3A team championships, four members of the Foxes got in a car wreck near the intersection of Field Club and Hickory Hill roads. Power lines fell on top of the car and the four were trapped for several hours before being rescued.
“While we were in the car I was thinking that I hoped we could play tomorrow. That was the main thing,” Fox Chapel senior Gregor Meyer said. “Then it started to sink in and I thought that we just need to get through this and get out of this and it was more than golf, for sure. It was about sticking with each other and ultimately getting through it.”
Meyer escaped the accident with a few cuts and bruises and actually attended the WPIAL finals the next day. Instead of conceding the spot, Deal mustered his lone available individual qualifier for the WPIAL individual championships, Amani Dambrosio, and five other players to represent the Foxes in the finals where they finished last in the six-team field after qualifying first.
Though Meyer was able to support his team from the gallery, the other passengers weren’t as fortunate. Will Livingston crawled away with a concussion while Aidan Oehrie suffered most grievously with six broken ribs, a broken sternum, a lacerated liver and spleen and a collapsed lung.
“Recovery was slow and it was hard because all I could do was sit down and I couldn’t go to school for like 20 days,” Oehrie said. “I couldn’t really get up and walk around. I just had to sit down.”
After the accident the players were in different hospitals, but they maintained contact as they and their families bonded closely after the accident and through the recovery process.
“The biggest thing that I took out of the whole experience last year was the support, the love, the caring and the genuineness of how these families are and how we became as a golf family,” Deal said. “The parents, the kids, the coaches, their friends at school, the administration, it was a very unique situation that we became better people for it and it put things into perspective that a WPIAL final is a big deal and, in reality, it’s not.”
Since the players were young and healthy, they physically recovered rather quickly form their injuries.
Even Livingston doesn’t have any post-concussion symptoms and Oehrie was back swinging a club weeks after the accident. Mentally, though, it has taken a little more time to let things shake out.
“In the beginning it was tough to trust any of my friends’ driving,” Livingston said. “Adults I trusted. But I think I’m getting to be a much better passenger and trust everybody.”
Going through that experience made Fox Chapel’s opening match win of the season against rival Shady Side Academy that much more poignant. It was the first time the true varsity had been on the course in competition in nearly a year and the moment was not lost on the players who came so close to never playing again.
“It definitely puts everything in perspective and taking nothing for granted,” Meyer said. “This is my last season and I know that we want to go to states and that’s our main goal and, my personal golfing career, I know I can’t take anything for granted and I have to go get it.”