On a football field in a jersey, Geronimo Santos is at home.<\/p>\n
But in a split second last year during James Madison High School\u2019s rivalry game against Lincoln High, the kicker\u2019s high school career was nearly ripped away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it was the play before the half. The half was in the timeout half, and it was a punt return. And man, all I remember is just blacking out and looking up, looking up at my leg, and it\u2019s like backwards. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. My heart skipped the beat,’\u201d Santos said.<\/p>\n
Santos was rushed from the \u201cSouth Dallas Classic\u201d game by ambulance to a hospital, where doctors determined he tore his ACL, MCL and PCL.<\/p>\n
Head football coach Marcus Gates said they were told recovery could take years.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust about every ligament in his body was damaged or torn,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n
Still, Santos was determined.<\/p>\n
He dedicated mornings before school to rehab and showed up daily to work with the school\u2019s trainer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing your peers compete against other people and you\u2019re just sitting on the sidelines, I mean, it\u2019s mentally hard, but I know I can get through it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Against all odds, this weekend, Santos will take the field at John Kincaide Stadium, once again facing off against Lincoln High in that big rivalry game exactly one year after he was sidelined.<\/p>\n
This time, with an extra special recognition of just how far he\u2019s come.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis dad came to me and asked, could we do a ceremonial kickoff for Geronimo? And I was like, sure, man. I think that\u2019d be great. He deserves it. He\u2019s a wonderful kid, a smart kid. And we thought that he deserves that opportunity,\u201d Gates said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I was going to play again. I knew some way, somehow. I mean, I\u2019m a big faith guy, so I knew the Lord Jesus Christ. I\u2019m big on faith, so I knew he was going to make a way for me,\u201d Santos said.<\/p>\n
The game kicks off Saturday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a football field in a jersey, Geronimo Santos is at home. But in a split second last…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":222615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-222614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-tx","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115195041850625180","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}