ZEELAND, Mich. (WOOD) — Two years ago, Will Skaggs thought his high school football career was over before it had barely begun.
He was getting ready for his sophomore year at Zeeland West High School and football practices had already started. At the team’s third practice on Aug. 11, 2022, he was filling in at quarterback.
“I tossed (the ball) to our running back and then I had to go lead block for him and I tripped on the kid in front of me. My right leg hit him and my left leg got caught behind me, and I fell forward,” he said.
His leg was twisted behind him. He had torn his ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), PCL (posterior cruciate ligament), LCL (lateral collateral ligament), hamstring and perineal nerve.
“I looked and I was like, ‘My leg’s not supposed to look like that,’ and I couldn’t really talk,” he said.
His father, Brian Skaggs, got a call from the coach right after it happened.
“(The coach) told me, ‘You need to get here, and if you’ve got a weak stomach, you don’t want to go see him. It’s bad,’” Brian Skaggs recalled. “As I walked onto the field, I saw him laying down… I put on a smile and said, ‘Hey dude, let’s get back to practice come on, enough screwin’ around,’ and he said, ‘I knew my dad would make a dumb joke,’ and I delivered on that.”
He rode with his son to the hospital, where doctors were concerned about a lack of blood flow and couldn’t find a pulse in Will’s leg. If there was no blood flow after they reset the leg, they would have to consider amputating. Within the next hour or so, doctors were able to reset the leg and the blood started to flow again.
Still, there was a lot of damage.
“Doctors found the perineal nerve was severed, and they went back in a couple weeks later to try and repair that nerve, but it’s unrepairable,” Will said.
As a result, Will can’t lift up his foot. He had several surgeries to add cadaver nerves and ligaments to his leg, which are not as strong as his own were, so he wears two braces when he’s putting pressure on that leg, like during practice. One of them holds his foot up at all times, allowing him to put pressure on it to bring it down if he needs.
Will was determined to get back under the Friday night lights.
“Seeing all my friends out there, I just thought, ‘Man, I want to play with them again. I don’t want my freshman year to be the last time I ever played sports with my friends.’ So that pushed me even harder to get back out there,” he said.
On Aug. 30, 2024, 750 days after his injury, Will walked onto the field at Muskegon High School to play again.
“This has been a long journey. That Friday night, watching him run onto the field, and they beat a great team — Muskegon, they’re a wonderful team — and to see him get a victory there. We’ve only ever beat them three times in history, and it’s a big deal. It was a great night, a great night,” Brian Skaggs said.
Will also plays basketball and will be back on the court again for his senior season later in the school year. Both of his parents are teachers and Will plans to pursue the same career when he graduates, with a goal of attending Hope College or Michigan State University.
