Beating The Odds

Ryan Englebert’s incredible journey to recovery and triumph over despair

By Korey Mallien
Advocate sports editor

Less than a year after being told he would never play football again, Englebert is back.

The play wasn’t anything special. University of Wisconsin-Stout running back Ryan Englebert took the handoff, cut to his left on a ‘37 sweep’ and burst up field for a gain of five yards before being gang-tackled. But while Englebert has had far more electrifying runs during his college football career, none of them have been as satisfying or rewarding for the Blue Devils star as this one.

“It was awesome,” said Englebert, recalling his first carry of the season Sept. 11 against DePauw (Ind.) University. “It was great to be back.”

Englebert is indeed back — back from a horrific car accident last October in which he was busted up so badly that his promising football career was thought to be over.

He broke his right hip, dislocated his right pelvis and nearly had to have his right leg amputated because the trauma was so severe. But through four months of intense rehabilitation, a burning desire and unwavering commitment, Englebert, the former Southern Door High School standout, has defied the odds and the skeptics to once again play the game he so deeply loves.

“It’s an absolutely phenomenal story to see what he’s overcome to get back to football,” said UW-Stout coach Todd Strop. “He’s a great inspiration for our kids. I think it’s the best story this year in all of college football.”

"Screaming for my life..."
All Ryan Englebert wanted on the night of Oct. 1, 2003, was to enjoy a good home-cooked meal with one of his teammates and best friends. But what began as a routine trip to Matt Sprester’s parents’ house for dinner that day ended in a nightmare.

Having just completed practice, Englebert and Sprester were traveling northwest from the UW-Stout campus in Menomonie to the Sprester home in nearby Amery.

It was around 8 o’clock. Sprester was driving his 1996 Monte Carlo and Englebert was in the passenger seat, the two of them chatting about their upcoming game against UW-Oshkosh and listening to some rap music.

They headed up a steep hill on a seldom-traveled back road near the small western Wisconsin town and were only a mile from their destination. But when they reached the hilltop, an oncoming car, seemingly out of nowhere, cut in front of them to make a turn onto an adjoining road. There was no time to react. Sprester’s car smashed head-on with a 2000 Pontiac Grand Am driven by a teenage girl and spun off the road.

“All I remember seeing was headlights,” recalled Englebert, who said Sprester was traveling the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit. “And before I knew it, we were in the ditch.”

Englebert said he was wearing his seat belt, and the police report indicates the car’s air bags deployed, but the impact was so violent that his head and hand slammed into the windshield, shattering it into pieces.

Meanwhile, Englebert’s right knee hit the dashboard and drove his leg into his stomach, breaking his hip and dislocating his pelvis. Shaken but conscious, Englebert somehow managed to pull himself from the wrecked car.

“I have no idea how I got out, but when I went to take a step I just fell to the ground,” he said, unaware of the extent of his injuries. “I couldn’t move. It was pitch black. I was laying in a wet, swampy ditch, screaming for my life. There was a huge pool of blood on my sweatshirt. I didn’t know if anybody was going to help us or if I was going to live to see the next day.”

Sprester, too, had gotten out of the car and was somewhat luckier, suffering only a broken ankle. “If we hadn’t been wearing our seat belts,” Englebert contends, “there’s no way we would have survived.”

The two football players had cell phones, but couldn’t call for help, because they were destroyed in the accident. Meanwhile, the driver of the other car, 16-year-old Amanda Momeni of Amery, was uninjured, but she was in such total shock “she just sat there crying,” said Englebert.

Fortunately, after about 10 minutes, a man in a truck came along and rescued the young men. He carried Englebert to the vehicle, while Sprester hopped on one leg into the back.

Just before help arrived, Englebert thought about his football career. “I remember saying to Spree, ‘Our season is over. Everything we’ve worked for is down the tubes,’” said Englebert, who had rushed for 344 yards in three games before the accident.

Outlook isn’t good
While Englebert and Sprester had been rescued, their painful ordeal was far from over. The players were rushed to a hospital in Amery, but it didn’t have the doctors to perform the surgeries they would require, Englebert said. All medical personnel could do in Amery was stabilize Englebert’s and Sprester’s injuries.

The players were in the Amery hospital for about two hours, Englebert said, before being transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, about an hour away. “Doctors told me that if they had waited another half hour in Amery, I might have had to have my leg amputated because the blood supply had been cut off for so long,” said Englebert. It was dark purple. The femur was pushed into my stomach. I can’t describe what the pain was like, but I know that I had a lot of painkillers in me and they weren’t helping.

While Englebert was in the hospital, a doctor called his parents here in Door County to inform them of the accident. Gary and Chris Englebert were obviously devastated. “We got the call at 10 o’clock at night and my wife was shaking so bad that she had to give me the phone. I wasn’t much better,” recalled Gary. “I could hear Ryan screaming in the background. It was awful. We wanted to help him, but there was nothing we could do because we’re six hours away.”

Englebert was in surgery for roughly two hours. Doctors worked his pelvis back into place, then reset his broken hip. He was fortunate that the break was clean or he might have needed pins or a metal plate to hold the hip together, his father said.

When he came out of surgery, Englebert once again thought about football. “The first question I asked the doctor was if I would ever play again,” said Englebert, who in high school set Door County records with 5,414 career rushing yards and 90 touchdowns. “He said, ‘Put it this way: Your injury is worse than what Bo Jackson had.’ He told me I would be lucky to ever walk normal again.”

After a week in the hospital, Englebert lived with his parents in Brussels. He was pretty much confined to a special hospital bed for about a month and had to rely on his parents to help him with basic tasks that most people take for granted. “He couldn’t get around at all. We had to help him to the bathroom, help him shower, all that good stuff,” said Gary, who was out of work at the time and cared for his son. “And Ryan wasn’t happy about it. He was always asking himself, Why me? He was really depressed and demoralized. He went through hell.”

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