This year, when most high school athletes were getting ready to sign their letter of intent for National Signing day on February 4, Darion Norris was recovering in the Intensive Care Unit at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. Norris and three high school classmates were involved in a major car accident on January 29, leaving Norris with potentially debilitating injuries. At the time, he was a senior standout wide receiver at Everman High School in Fort Worth, who had verbally committed to Tarleton State University to join the Texan football team for the Fall 2015 season.

Now, eight months later, Norris and his mother, Regina Bassett, walked JTAC News through the journey to recovery. 

When recalling his initial thought process when he regained consciousness and understood the extent of his injuries, Norris was understandably concerned for his health but he was also worried about his future in football. 

“Am I going to be able to play football? Am I going to be able to walk? What’s going on?” Norris recalled, fearing that his scholarship would be revoked due to the uncertainty of his injured status.

Tarleton head coach Cary Fowler helped put Norris’s worries at ease and demonstrated solidarity by honoring the senior’s commitment when informed of the accident. Fowler called Bassett while her son was still in the hospital to inform her that, if he couldn’t play, then he could coach. 

“This made me hopeful because I felt like God was setting the stage for something greater in Darion’s life,” said Bassett.

When Bassett first received the call that not only had her son been in an accident, but that he was in the ICU, she admits she didn’t know what to think. 

“The day of Darion’s accident I felt immediate fear and shock, Bassett said. “I knew from pictures of the car that the accident was really bad, but didn’t realize how seriously he was injured was until I saw him in the ICU.” 

In the accident, Norris fractured two bones in his neck, and broke the C-4 and C-6 vertebrae in his spine. Had those two bones shifted, Norris would have faced paralysis. Norris also shattered the bones in his wrist and hands, and suffered slight eardrum damage and acute vision loss.

Norris said his recovery process hasn’t been easy. Once he was out of the ICU, he spent eight weeks with a post-operative spine support brace to prevent any damage to the spine and a screw through his hand to keep the bones in the right place to heal properly. Once the screw was taken out, he wore a cast for six more weeks.

Along with the physical recovery process, the mental recovery was just as important Bassett said she knew that her son needed to recover psychologically.

“[Once he returned to school] his GPA had fallen and he was hanging around people that he normally didn’t hang around and shut off all of his closest friends.” Bassett said, “I decided to take him to see the counselor when I realized he couldn’t talk to me but he opened up and he discovered he was afraid. He had been reliving the accident over and over throughout the eight weeks that he sat in his room and to them it sounded like he was suffering from a form of PTSD, which is not uncommon of people who have been through a major accident.”

Once Norris made the decision to come to Tarleton early in the summer as opposed to waiting until the fall, his mother credits his teammate, Kevin Baker, in helping him transition to college life. 

“He decided to go [to Tarleton] early and practice with the squad during the summer and stayed with him [Baker], whom I love to death because he has made a great friend in Kevin, and his whole life just turned around completely,” Bassett said.

Although they would have wished for a better circumstance to inspire, Norris and his mother look to use his story to inspire others. 

“I feel that God has used this experience to set the stage for him to reach out to other young people who look up to him to impact them in a positive way,” Bassett said.

Though he feels as if he is almost 100 percent physically and mentally recovered, Norris said he knows that every day is a new beginning. 

Norris is currently in his redshirt year on the football team, which is typically used for freshman players to train and workout with the team. With his redshirt year, he has four more years of NCAA eligibility. He has spent this time getting his weight, speed and strength up.

“There’s more to come,” Norris said. “I have a lot of things I’ve been working hard for and I’m ready for them to show.”