‘A walking miracle.’ Injury helps Dunbar player see there’s more to him than football.
In an instant, Paul Laurence Dunbar football’s Ethan Hampton suffered a spinal injury that changed his life forever.
But even through the hardship and the pain he’s experienced, Hampton knows he was spared the worst outcome he could have had. He believes the change can be for good.
But it’s not easy.
“It’s just hard to think about because you had high hopes for living and making a big career out of this sport,” Hampton told the Herald-Leader during an interview at his home this week with his parents, Melissa and David. “Because it’s all the love that you’ve had, and you felt like it made you who you were.”
The 6-foot, 230-pound senior lineman had been considered the strongest member of Dunbar’s football team. Perhaps no one knew his strength within.
“When it all comes to the end, you’ve got to fight through the past and you’ve got to figure out what God’s got for you and what’s in his hands for it,” Hampton said. “You can’t just give up. … Things happen for a reason.”
‘Mom, I can’t feel anything’
Hampton will never forget the two plays that ended his football career.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Hampton said. “There has not been one day I haven’t stopped myself from watching the video of when it happened. I can’t go to sleep without watching it. I can’t get up in the mornings without watching it.”
The game against Mercer County on Aug. 26 had been postponed from the night before because of lingering storms. Instead of being played at Community Stadium in Versailles as part of a two-game event, Dunbar traveled Saturday morning to Mercer County’s Alvis Johnson Field in Harrodsburg to take on the Titans.
By the third quarter, the temperature had risen above 90 degrees. The game required periodic hydration breaks because the heat index was so high.
Hampton’s initial collision looked like any other tackle on any football field in America.
Hampton ran down a Mercer County receiver from behind and met a teammate at the ball carrier. As they made the tackle, their helmets clashed.
Hampton got to his feet almost immediately. But something felt off.
“I got up and then I bent over for a minute and said, ‘Something don’t feel right,” Hampton recalled. “And then I started trying to walk forward and I stumbled into the referee.”
Hampton’s father remarked to his wife that he thought the heat might have been getting to their son.
Hampton shrugged off the pain and the awkward step and rejoined his defense on the line for the next play, which ran away from him without any significant contact. He took another awkward step as the teams lined up again but got down into his stance.
“I’ve always pushed to keep going no matter if you’re feeling aches or pains in your body,” Hampton said. “I mean, it’s part of the sport. And I kept pushing through it. And then it just came to the last time.”
With the Titans near the goal line, Mercer’s offense came right through Hampton’s position at left tackle. Hampton got knocked onto his back with his blocker over him.
Mercer appeared to score, but a penalty was called. As everyone else at the game began figuring out what had just transpired, Hampton willed himself to his feet once more.
But only for a moment.
“(My) right side just went away. It was just like there was nothing there anymore,” Hampton said. “When I tried to get back up and move, I couldn’t feel that right side move. I felt the left side move, but the right side wasn’t doing anything for me.”
Hampton dropped to his knees and tried to prop himself up on all fours.
“I was freaking out,” Hampton said. “I didn’t know what to do or what to say.”
Instinctively, he took off his helmet with his left hand, the only one that was working.
Trainers quickly came to his aid. His mother made her way down from the stands. Her intuition told her this wasn’t about the heat. When the trainers began paying attention to Ethan’s neck, her fears were confirmed.
She walked toward him: “I said, ‘‘Ethan, are you OK?’ And he said, ‘Mom, I can’t feel anything.’”
‘It was like I’d seen a ghost’
There was only one ambulance on call in Harrodsburg that day, and the Hamptons were told it had already been sent out on a trauma call when their son was hurt.
Firefighters arrived within a few minutes, but the Hamptons credited the team trainers and a doctor who was one of Dunbar’s football parents for making sure Ethan remained stabilized until paramedics arrived.
The 46-minute wait for the ambulance felt like an eternity.
After a CT scan at Harrodsburg’s hospital, Hampton was stable enough to be transferred to UK Hospital where he would spend two and a half days in the intensive care unit.
There, doctors explained Hampton had suffered a spinal cord injury at the C5 and C6 vertebrae in his neck. No bones had been broken, but the myelin sheath insulating the spinal cord had ruptured.
Initially, Hampton lost all feeling and movement in his right side. And while he might recover from that, he could never play football again.
“When the nurse came there and told me that football was over for me, it was like I was looking at a brick wall … . It was like I’d seen a ghost,” Hampton said. “But then I started thinking God has a plan for this. … I might be upset, and this is definitely a hard time, but God has a plan.”
‘Y’all can’t be scared to see me’
Teammates and coaches came to check on Hampton as soon as the game was over. Dunbar assistant coaches Charles Pardue and Rodney Byrd stayed at the hospital for hours and checked on him each day he was there.
When Hampton got out of the ICU and began physical therapy, the team visited again.
Hampton had some movement back already, but his limitations were obvious. He struggled to pick up a fork. He couldn’t squeeze a stress ball. He remembers the look on his teammates’ faces.
“I was like, ‘Guys, y’all can’t be scared to see me,” Hampton said. “You can’t be scared to go play the sport that you love. You just need to push day by day like it’s your last because you never know when it’s going to be.”
Over the next few days, Hampton continued to recover at a remarkable rate. By the fifth day, some feeling and tingling returned. He began to be able to walk. But with those sensations also came tremendous nerve pain, a side effect of the damage.
‘Once a Dawg, Always a Dawg’
On Friday, six days after being taken by ambulance from his game, Hampton was released from the hospital. He surprised everyone at Dunbar when he arrived at Jon R. Akers Stadium on crutches for their game that night against Collins.
But that was nothing compared to the surprise the Dunbar team and community had for him.
The Bulldogs entered the field through a banner made by their cheerleaders that read “Once a Dawg, Always a Dog, #BigEStrong #52.”
And when the offense took the field, it lined up with only 10 players. Hampton’s position at left guard stood empty. At the snap, a flag was thrown for illegal formation. Collins declined the penalty.
The emotions Hampton felt overwhelmed him. But he said the feelings weren’t just about what he’d lost.
“Getting to be out there and getting to know the love from Dunbar — getting to see how many people actually respect me not just because of football, but the person I was. It made a big difference to me,” Hampton said. “You realize sports don’t make people love who you are. It’s the person that you have inside of you that people love.”
It was Hampton’s job to carry the American flag when the team ran onto the field and Hampton was known for having an American flag towel tucked into his uniform. Against Collins, every Dunbar player had that towel.
After the injury, Hampton accepted his coaches’ offer to let him be a student assistant coach. In the weeks since, he’s worked with the offensive and defensive lines as they prepare to take the field.
“We always knew that Ethan was a great leader for our football team,” Dunbar head coach Wes Johnson said. “He still has the desire and the passion to play, but that’s really translated over to a passion to help these guys get prepared for the next game that we’re playing.”
Dunbar quarterback Ethan Teall praised his friend’s coaching abilities.
“The way he coaches for our O-line, especially — we’ve got a really young O-line, he was the only senior — for him to come back and help us out and be the coach and stuff has been really, really impactful,” Teall said. “He doesn’t let anything get in his way, no matter what people say to him. … He’s a fighter, for real.”
On the team’s trip to Boone County a few weeks ago, Coach Pardue offered Hampton a ride up with him to the game. They talked about everything but football.
“Our relationship has definitely gotten stronger,” Pardue said. “Now, I’m trying to guide him through his next steps after this injury. We’ve had a lot of conversations about that.”
Those gestures made Hampton realize his coaches remain invested in his future.
“They never treated me like I was just their athlete,” he said. “They treated me like I was one of their sons.”
‘A walking miracle’
About two to three weeks after the injury, Hampton began looking a lot like his old self.
He returned to school and to his job at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
But his symptoms linger and are most noticeable when he’s tired. His right foot “gallops” at times and he will sometimes drag his right toe. His right hand tremors occasionally.
The Hamptons said doctors have told them those symptoms could go away if the myelin sheath heals over the next year. But the nature of spinal injuries means there are no guarantees.
“The doctor said (Ethan) was a walking miracle,” Melissa Hampton said. “We should not be where we are. We should not be having conversations about whether (he) can drive. We should be having conversations about making (his) home handicap accessible.”
Whatever the future holds, Hampton believes he’s ready to face it. At this moment, he doesn’t know what he will do for the rest of his life. The injury closed some doors for him that he expected to be open after high school.
“One thing that I’ve taken out of it is that football isn’t who I was,” Hampton said. “Yes, football helped me realize a lot of things about who I was. And football, yes, is a love for me. But the person I am is still inside me. Just because I lost football doesn’t take that away from me. I’m still strong and passionate about what I do and how I do it.”
This story was originally published October 20, 2023 at 6:45 AM.
