Walking with Anthony

Ty Williams

Name: Ty Williams

Birthday:

Age: 23

Hometown: Gaithersburg, Md.

Hobbies: Football

Date of Injury:

Level of Injury: C6 incomplete

Ty Williams is a college student-athlete at Georgetown University who tragically, on a September first down, 10 to go, a red-zone pass went wrong and his football career was cut short. Georgetown’s official record of that game said the pass was dropped, but Williams, in truth, had broken it up. He went low, the slot receiver for Saint Francis of Pennsylvania went high, and the impact caused the ball to bound off the latter’s hands and to the turf; The impact also did something else. “It was all tingling,” Williams recalled. “I had no idea what position my legs were in.” His neck had recoiled at the receiver’s waist, he spent 30 minutes lying on the field, two weeks in a hospital and the next 4 months at another facility in Atlanta. “Everything changed in an instant,” said his mother, Melissa Rand. A fractured vertebra, “C6 incomplete” has left the 21-year-old with partial feeling in his lower body but not the ability to will it to movement. Although he cannot play, Ty motivates The Hoyas “every day,” roommate and defensive tackle Bryan Jefferson said; and they see him often. He is still a frequent practice attendee, No. 2 on the roster, and front and center in this year’s team picture. Ty is still taking classes at Georgetown, where he is completing his junior year as a government major after he missed a semester last fall. Still very much a part of the program in all respects aside from the one he perhaps craves most. Ty says, “I’ve got one option: just to work and keep working.” Work means another round of physical therapy at MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital in Northwest Washington. “He’s never given up hope,” his mother says, “sometimes I don’t even know how he does it.”

 

 

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