One of the greatest goals an athlete can achieve is coming back from a potentially career-ending injury. Broken bones may heal, but the time spent recovering is time away from the practice field that makes returning more difficult.
For Camden County High School’s Eduardo Merino, encouragement from his mother got him back on the soccer pitch after a serious leg injury sidelined him for nine months.
“She wanted me to play soccer so bad because she knew how good I really was and pushed me to try again,” Merino said.
But it was not an easy return. A badly broken leg his sophomore year kept Merino off the field for coach Rob Gabriel’s Wildcats; most of that time would have been spent conditioning and preparing for Merino’s junior year. Instead, he was not ready for the next season. When he did return to the team, he had obviously been away for a while. He was slower, his touch on the ball was worse, his shots were weak, and his passes were inaccurate.
“It was a bad, frustrating year for me,” Merino said.
Merino started playing soccer when he was just 3-years-old in Puerto Rico, where he lived until he was 7. He recalled scoring a goal to seal the game when he was just 6-years-old.
Later, he was voted as the MVP of the tournament and Best Player of the Municipal of Caguas, an area south of San Juan in the central mountains of Puerto Rico. Once he came to Georgia, he continued playing soccer through middle school. During that time, Merino was on the recreation league team that won the Georgia state championship. He decided not to play his freshman year at Camden County so he could give basketball a chance.
“I came back to soccer my sophomore year and got injured around mid-season,” Merino said.
His injury occurred in a game he will never forget. A junior varsity contest against Coffee County became more about the teams getting physical than scoring goals.
“A lot of fouls were called, and both teams were just out to get each other, really no intention of getting the ball, just hammering the opponent,” Merino said. “I was feeling a little cocky because I was taking over the game.”
Toward the end of the game, Merino’s team was up by a goal, but the Trojans were continually attacking. The Trojans moved the ball into position, and one of the Coffee County players was about to take an open shot on goal. That’s when Merino stepped in front of him to block the shot. But the player missed the ball and instead struck Merino’s leg with full force.
“I didn’t hurt at first,” Merino said. “I didn’t believe I actually broke it, but my teammate was yelling, ‘It’s broken! It’s broken!’ I guess I was in shock or something.”
His Wildcat teammates accompanied him to the hospital to wish him well, but it would be a long time before Merino could rejoin them and play soccer again. Once he was able, he worked hard to improve by working out and doing a lot of running. When his senior season came around, Merino was ready. He improved his touch on the ball, leg strength, dribbling, and passing.
On the soccer pitch, he enjoys setting up teammates to give them a chance to have their moment. Merino is an unselfish playmaker at center midfielder, and when he gets the ball, he looks for ways to make the game easier for his teammates by passing to open spaces and making the smartest decisions to control the game. This season, he helped a teammate score his first goal.
“I was able to give him the right pass in order to score,” Merino said. “It lit up his face like a Christmas tree. It was his first goal ever on varsity, and I was happy that I was able to be part of his goal. ”
The son of Lilliam Ramos of Woodbine, Merino will graduate this year from Camden County High School with a 3.7 GPA. He will attend the University of Georgia in the fall and plans to major in civil engineering, but is undecided as to whether or not he will try out for the Bulldogs soccer team. He had four schools show interest in his soccer abilities, but Merino wanted to attend UGA.
Merino’s advice on preparing for a soccer season is simple. It involves a great deal of running so that the player can maintain stamina for the duration of the game.
“What good does it do to be talented with shooting and passing if you can barely last five minutes on the field?” Merino said.
SE-MI-0517-Merino
MI – Eduardo Merino
Camden County Boys Soccer
By Rob Asbell
Photography by Michael Brinson
The Comeback
