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McKenzie Milton was tired, fatigued and, given the import of the occasion, maybe, a little jubilant, too.
For the first time in the 15 months since the University of Central Florida quarterback was carted off the field on a stretcher in the final regular-season game of the Knights’ 2018 football season, Milton was jogging again.
“It was hard, I got tired fast. I definitely hadn’t felt that way in a long time, so it was good,” he said about a modest jog at the Knights’ athletic training facility in Orlando two weeks ago.
For the Mililani High graduate, it is a journey best measured not in how far he went that day but in how far he has come since his right leg was left painfully contorted by a hit from a University of South Florida defender.
Back then, as they rushed him to a hospital, there were concerns whether the player who had led the Knights to a 23-game winning streak would even be able to keep his right leg from amputation, much less jog unaided again after suffering torn ligaments, a dislocated knee, a severed artery and nerve damage.
But there he was Wednesday on Twitter in a brace, planting on the surgically repaired right leg and flinging passes on the practice field to a distant receiver again, an exercise once routine but now celebrated as a hard-earned milestone.
“It felt good, the muscle memory was coming back fairly quickly,” Milton said. It was the lower half of the body that took some time to get reacquainted.
For months now there have been brief, periodic updates about the stages of his progress to and off crutches.
But seeing him spin off passes to a distant receiver in the Twitter video put his remarkable comeback in context.
“It has been a long time, so I’m thankful. I’m definitely grateful. It could have been a lot worse,” Milton said. “But I’m definitely not content or satisfied. I’m working hard every day to get back to 100%” through five- and six-day-a-week rehabilitation sessions. “I feel worse when I don’t do something every day.”
Ask him where he is now and he says “99%” before breaking into a chuckle. “I’m kidding. I honestly don’t know.”
He declines to put a timeline on whether he expects to be back for the 2020 season or possibly 2021 saying “It is one day at a time, … just focus on one day at a time.”
For as much as Milton is focused on regaining what was lost to him in what had been viewed as a Heisman Trophy candidacy season, he says it is a journey that can’t be rushed. He says he has to be at a point where he can help the team and play at a suitable level.
The 2019 season went down as a redshirt year and the ’20 campaign makes him a fifth-year senior. But ’21 could be made available to him through what you’d figure would be a fairly automatic medical hardship waiver as a 24-year-old sixth-year graduate player, should he choose to petition the NCAA.
At the moment, degree in hand, he is working on a master’s in educational leadership and helping to mentor the other quarterbacks, including fellow Mililani graduate Dillon Gabriel, who will be a second year starter in the fall.
Ask Milton what it is, besides an inner, diesel-driven determination, that keeps his comeback going and he’ll tell you it is family, and well-wishes from former high school and current college teammates.
In the Tampa hospital he spent time in, Milton saw patients much younger than himself who lost limbs. Look around UCF’s training facility, he says, and you’ll see other teammates, including one in a brace and a sling coming back from knee and shoulder injuries.
“They encourage me and I encourage them.”
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
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