Imagine: You are a star football player walking onto the field for the first game of your senior year. It is Friday night, and the stands are packed. You’ve already racked up three all-conference and two all-state selections in your first three years of high school; you’ve been offered multiple scholarships to play college football next year. You spent all summer thinking about football, training for football, planning your future around football.
Then one tackle changes everything.
When Berlin High School linebacker Zachary Hrubiec broke his ankle in the season opener of his senior year, the timing seemed too heartbreaking to be true. For years, recruiters had tried to tempt him away from Berlin, but he’d insisted on finishing out high school playing with his beloved Redcoats. He was team captain. He was finally getting to play beside his younger brother, a freshman. His father, another Berlin football legend, was coach.
“A season-ending injury in any year in any sport is terrible,” says Zach. “And my senior year, all this hype and expectation – in the first play of the second quarter, it just got wiped away.”
