Jackson McCarty is the starting quarterback for the Mountain View Bruins. In his senior year, he starts a new season hoping to be the best season yet. As they come to their first game ready to start the season off strong they are hit with the worst possible outcome. As Jackson looks for his next pass, he roles to the left trying his best to avoid the other team. Not being able to get the pass off in time he gets tackled from behind and lands awkwardly severely hurting his knee. Shocked in pain he lies on the ground praying that it’s not a serious injury. The team continues to play without their quarterback, and lose the game despite starting out really strong. As the game ended everyone checked on Jackson and asked if he was ok. He was in pain but he didn’t think it was that serious. “Everyone told me that it wasn’t as bad as I thought because I would be in more pain if it was more serious. The only reason I cried was because I couldn’t go back into the game.”

It wasn’t until the next day that Jackson knew what he had actually injured and the news couldn’t have hurt him more. He had torn his ACL, which meant his highschool football career was over. The recovery time for the injury would take up to 9 months with 6 weeks of no weight on the knee and months of rehab. This would go past the end of the season. As his family and close friends know, for Jackson, football is life. For Jackson a torn ACL was the worst thing that could happen.

We asked him how he has handled it and turned it into a learning experience and he said, “Obviously, I am really sad and frustrated about it but there are still a lot of opportunities for me in college football which is my goal. You can only move forward from this so look for the positive instead of the negative. With the negative being sure I’m not playing, but the positive being I’m going to come back stronger than I was.”

Jackson is not done with football and plans to work hard for college football. He is also not completely done with the Mountain View team either. Since his injury Jackson has been able to go to every practice and help coach his team. Especially Lotoa Lesa who took over for Jackson as quarterback. Jackson also says that it is a possibility that after highschool he could come back and be a offensive coordinator for the Mountain View Bruins.

We also asked him what kept him motivated to keep going and push through, and he said, “Proving people wrong. I’ve been doubted my entire life. I’ve always been too small or not strong enough. So it’s my goal to prove people wrong and succeed when they said I couldn’t.” He is thankful for the support and promises that this is not the end of his football story.