Apr 19, 2016 By Eleanor Bailey 9 min read

The crack of the bat. The pop of the leather mitt when squeezed, catching the baseball. The smell of freshly mowed grass.

Each spring, Liam Sweeney embraced those things when he donned his Seton-La Salle uniform. Today, he dreads the diamond. He grapples instead with the reality of not playing the sport that he loves because of a near-paralyzing injury incurred on the football field last fall.

It was a simple play but with multiple ramifications, mostly negative, for Sweeney. The 6-2, 205-pound fullback had taken a toss from his quarterback during Seton-La Salle’s Century Conference showdown with rival South Fayette. As Sweeney motioned outside, he collided, face-to-face, with a defender.

“When I hit (the other player) I had a complete sting of my body. I didn’t feel anything. I was on the ground, and all I was wondering was, am I paralyzed?”

Somehow, Sweeney summoned the strength to get up. “But,” he said, “I couldn’t feel my legs underneath me.”

Sweeney collapsed again. As he lay back on the ground, he prayed to God “that I could get up and walk again,” he said. “It was scary. I didn’t think I was going to be able to walk, ever again.”

Shortly after he left the field, Sweeney regained sensation in his legs. In fact, he re-entered the game. After a long pause, he admitted, from a health standpoint, it was not the smartest move. While going back into the contest did not hurt him further, Sweeney consented he was playing “Russian roulette” with his health the remainder of the game, a 17-14 loss to the Lions.

Once home, the Mt. Lebanon resident knew there was something terribly wrong “because my whole body …” he paused. “I never had a feeling like that before. I was stinging in my whole body still.”

When he went to school on Monday, Sweeney sought the advice of the trainer because he actually thought he suffered a concussion from the tackle.

“I didn’t think anything about my neck, because the hit wasn’t helmet-to-helmet. I thought it was a concussion.” Sweeney added that he had feeling in all his limbs although it was “tingly.”

That symptom proved significant, enough that Sweeney spent the remainder of the week being examined by physicians and specialists. Tests and an MRI revealed stenosis as well as a spinal cord bruise and a herniated disc. Until the injury occurred, the 18-year-old senior was unaware of the stenosis, a condition he has had his entire life. Because of the other issues to his spinal cord, Sweeney underwent surgery. During the procedure, the C-5 and C-6 discs in his vertebrae were fused.

“The surgery was a result of the hit,” he said. “I could have been paralyzed.”

Sweeney’s mother, Heather, who is a hospice nurse, concurred.

“Liam literally was millimeters away from paralysis,” she said. “For whatever reason, my son was spared. Maybe it was luck. Maybe God has something else in mind for him. But, I thank God every time I watch him walk.”

Two weeks after Dr. Joon Lee of UPMC Montefiore performed the spinal fusion and disc replacement on Feb. 2, Sweeney was up, walking and “feeling fine.”

“Going into surgery, though, I was terrified,” he said. “I am very afraid of needles. I’m not a fan of it. The surgery paid off in the end, but it was an experience that I will never forget.”

Sweeney can’t forget. The outcome won’t let him. After seeking opinion after opinion from renowned doctors such as Lee as well as Dr. Michael Oh, Dr. Joseph Maroon and Dr. James Kang, the consensus was the same: no more contact sports, even baseball, because of his condition and because of the weakness caused by the instability of his neck due to the fusion.

“Something wrong could happen to that,” Sweeney explained, “and there is also damage to my spinal cord already.”

Mrs. Sweeney agreed. “We were told that it’s still a very high risk for further paralysis above or below his fusion,” she said.

The hit and the surgery, indeed, changed the course of Sweeney’s life as well as his team. Before the season-ending injury, he had racked up 67 tackles, 15 for losses, and recorded six sacks.

“Our defense was never the same after his injury,” SLS football coach Damon Rosol said of his three-year starter. “We also had a void in leadership on both side of the ball,” Rosol added, indicating the impact Sweeney had as a two-year starter at fullback.

An all-conference linebacker, Sweeney had also committed to the University of Albany. His father, Jim, who played 16 seasons in the NFL with the Jets, Seahawks and Steelers, is an offensive line coach for the Great Danes. Now he will attend Slippery Rock University and pursue a career in safety management.

“I’m real cautious and I want everything to be right,” Sweeney said. “So, I think (safety management) will be a good career for me. I like to keep people safe and protected.”

Though he has been unable to protect his teams physically from losses after his injury, Sweeney provides an emotional uplift to his teammates as well as leadership from his years of experience in sports.

“After his injury, there was understandably a slight grieving process that Liam went through with the games he loves to play being taken away from him,” said Rosol. “However, Liam rebounded nicely and basically turned into a young coach for my staff and our team. Whether it was practice or games, he was there to work with his teammates and try to help in any way he could. I am not sure that every kid in the same boat would have responded like he did. I feel this is a great testament to the attitude and character this young man possesses.”

Although he holds out hope of playing baseball this season, Sweeney attempts to contribute anyway he can. He attends all practices and games. An all-star catcher, he tries to dispense pointers to younger players as they battle for a playoff spot.

“I just try to do what I can. Try to give advice from my experiences,” he said. “I think I have been through a lot of varsity games where I can give some of my knowledge to the younger guys and try to help them calm down. It’s not easy playing high school varsity sports.”

It’s even harder giving them up earlier than anticipated.

“It’s like having somebody die in your life,” Sweeney said of not being able to compete. “It’s unnatural. It’s not something that I want to wake up knowing that I can’t play.

“I love football and baseball equally. When it’s baseball season, I’m all for baseball. I’m a baseball player. When it’s football season, I’m a football player.

“It kills me not being able to play,” he continued. “All I’ve wanted was to get a WPIAL championship.”

As a sophomore, Sweeney came close. But Steel Valley came from behind to beat the Rebels, 6-5, for the WPIAL Class AA baseball title. Sweeney remembers vividly the photo printed in a local newspaper of him smashing his catcher’s mask down onto the ground as the winning run crossed the plate.

“I was so disgusted,” he said. “Watching that run come across the plate might have been one of the most painful games of my life.”

Sweeney’s inability to compete in sports has been painful for his parents to watch. They remember his first no-hitter three years ago. They recall last year’s harbringer of things to come. In 2015, Sweeney put up all-star numbers at the plate, batting .476, after a sensational sophomore season driving in 22 runs and guiding the Rebels to the district finals.

“This isn’t a boy who lost interest in sports,” said Heather Sweeney. “It’s like taking the air from his lungs. All his life, Liam wanted to carve out his own path, not simply live in the shadows of his father’s NFL career. From the time Liam was 3, he loved sports. Seeing this happen to him has been one of the most devastating blows in our lives as parents, not because we ever expected him to play professionally, but because he purely loves football and baseball for the love of the game.

“I have watched this boy lose what he loved more than life, but he continues to be strong and smile,” Mrs. Sweeney continued. “He works out in the garage by himself now. He works harder in school.”

Excelling in the classroom has replaced sports for Sweeney. He said that he is taking all the hard work and effort he expended on sports and is putting it toward his schoolwork and pursuing his life as it is. His injury taught him an important, yet cruel, life lesson, he added.

“Treat everything as if it’s the last time (you’ll do it), because you never know when it’s going to end. It also has shown me that there are a whole lot of other things in life that are more important than sports. I’m more motivated to do schoolwork now because I know that I don’t have sports to lean on.”

While he hopes against hope to be able to play “full-speed sports again some day,” Sweeney does not discount contributing his acumen in a different manner in the future. Perhaps coaching is an option?

“I’ve always wanted to coach, but I think that would be something that I wanted to look into a little later in life.”

Mrs. Sweeney sees her son contributing from the bench already.

“Liam didn’t walk away (from sports) on his own terms,” she said. “Yet, he had the wisdom to realize that walking is more important than playing a game. That those steps we take every day for granted, mean a whole lot more when you feel your body paralyzed on a football field.

“I realize what could have been but one day, hopefully this season, I will get that boy back on a field, mentoring his friends and younger boys. And we will smell that fresh cut grass and realize how wonderful it is to walk across that field. This time in a different role.”