David Clark is an intimidating looking player. Standing above almost everyone at 6’7” and weighing in at 345 pounds, the dual-sport athlete isn’t someone you want to face up against on the court or the field.
However, the most intimidating thing about David isn’t his size. It’s his will to succeed.
David’s athletic career started out normally enough. He enrolled at The Episcopal School of Jacksonville, hoping to excel in his favorite sport, basketball.
“I played basketball in AAU since third grade,” Clark said. “I was really good at basketball. That’s the reason I came to Episcopal, to play basketball.”
Of course, his size made him attractive to football coaches, so he joined the team as a tackle.
Unfortunately, that’s when the unthinkable happened.
“It was a preseason game against Paxon, and I was on defense trying to block the field goal,” he said. “So I just went up and blocked it, because nobody really could block me, so I jumped up as high as I could to block it and I just landed awkward on my leg.”
The diagnosis was not only career-ending, it was potentially life-altering.
“I had torn my ACL, my PCL, I tore my LCL, I tore my hamstring, and I had a stretch in my peroneal nerve that caused me to have drop foot,” he said.
He couldn’t walk: his foot was dangling from the rest of his leg. The doctors weren’t sure he could ever run again.
“It was very hard: I had three knee surgeries, and over the course of three years I couldn’t play sports. After my nerve surgery, I couldn’t bend my leg or move much of my body for a whole month.”
For someone whose whole life revolved around sports, and had planned a future in sports, the news was absolutely devastating. Coping with his altered reality became difficult for David.
“I never thought I’d play again,” he said. “The doctors said I’d never play sports again. After my first surgery, I was determined to get back and play basketball the next year, but it just didn’t work out over the course of my sophomore and junior years.”
The hardest part for David was trying to figure out why this happened.
“I was just asking God why this happened to me,” he said. “I had to stay true to my faith and continue to work hard every day, I never thought something like this could happen to me. Having to sit out three years and not play sports? Sports was everything to me and my family. And when I got hurt, it was a big change for me and my family.”
As she had been when he was on the field, his mom was his biggest cheerleader throughout his recovery.
“My mom was my biggest supporter, and everything I do is for her,” he said. “So, I wanted to get my mom the life she never had, and get her a house, so football is still on my mind to try and do that for her.”
Through hard work, patience, and a good amount of rehab, David managed to defy the odds. He didn’t just get back in the game: he excelled.
“In football, I started a couple games at left tackle, but I mostly played defensive tackle,” he said. “I had a couple sacks, a couple tackles for a loss. Basketball, I felt like I contributed well to the team. I was the tallest person on the team, and when we had to play bigger teams I was a real contributor playing those bigger players.”
Through his injury, he learned to diversify his life and have more than one plan, and thus, he focused more on his academics.
“I focused more on school and got my grades up so I could get into a good college,” he said. “I had depended on sports to get me into college, and not so much my grades. But after I got hurt, I realized I had to focus more on my grades than sports.”
Now a graduating senior, his future looks brighter than he could have ever imagined after his injury.
“I’m actually going to Valdosta State to play football,” he said. “I went up there and visited and they told me I have a good chance at starting at left tackle. I go to tryouts June 4th, and I’m excited to try out to be a Blazer.”
After going through the biggest test of his life, David has some advice for athletes facing injury, or anyone in life facing extreme odds:
“I wanted to be a motivation to people who have gone through things like I’ve gone through,” he said. “Just keep pushing; if it was easy, everybody would come back from injuries. One of my favorite quotes is ‘do something and be remembered, or do nothing and be forgotten’. So, you either do nothing and nobody remembers you, or you do something, and the worst that can happen is you fall, and then you get back up again and always keep pushing.”
June 2016
Northeast Florida
Written by: Kim Hoy
David Clark
The Episcopal School
Jacksonville, FL
