The Patriot Post® · Those Coppola Boys

I want to tell you about three Cappola boys. They are brothers, triplets actually, who love to play football. Two weeks ago, one of them, Tyler, ran for a school record 346 yards and five touchdowns in a 42-35 victory. His team, St. John’s Prep, was actually behind, 21-0, at the half but Tyler’s five colossal TDs triggered the huge comeback. He also added another 135 yards in receiving and kick returns to finish with 486 yards of total offense in the come-from-behind giant-slaying.

That’s pretty good, huh, but after the game he and his brother, Brandon, lifted the third, Jared, out of his wheelchair into their ole jalopy of a car and, when the triplets finally got home, the game’s hero again grabbed Jared. He hoisted his brother up over his tired and battered shoulder like a giggling bag of flour and the three merrily went down the stairs towards bed.

You see, two of the Cappola boys can no longer play for St. John’s, a proud all-boys Catholic school about 20 miles outside of Boston. Both Brandon and Jared suffered spinal-cord injuries playing the violent and harsh game that the triplets still adore.

Brandon fractured the C-5 vertebra in his neck in 2008 and his spine was so compromised that doctors forbade him from ever playing again. Then, in a preseason scrimmage just before the 2009 season, Jared also shattered his C-5 but his injuries were far worse. After a terrifying surgery and three weeks in intensive care, he was told he was a quadriplegic, that he would never walk again – if he was lucky enough to live.

Now let me “really” tell you about the three Coppola triplets. They are inseparable. They laugh, joke, kid and cry together. Recently, when the seniors played their last game on St. John’s home field, there was a deluge of emotion when the Coppola boys stood – once again, stood – before the near-hysterical crowd to present corsages to their dad and mom.

Tyler, 5-feet-9 and small by modern-day football standards, would rush for two more touchdowns that very night, giving him 15 TDs and over 1,500 yards rushing for the year. St. John’s won, 35-7, and the Coppola boys were ecstatic. Brandon, who is such a brain he’s Ivy League material academically, has morphed into the best team manager the Eagles have ever had.

And Jared, oh Jared! After a year of endless and oft-excruciating rehab, he can now stand and walk 92 steps without falling. He never misses being at practice with Tyler and Brandon because he, too, is part of every victory. You see, Tyler runs for Brandon and Jared – because they can’t.

Are you ready? Want me to explain the miracle of the kid that all the rehabilitation experts today call “J-Wow” because of his courage, his pluck, and his dogged determination? Allow me a bit of latitude to simply quote just one line from a very beautiful song; “He’s ain’t heavy … he’s my brother.”

Every morning the triplets wake up earlier than most high school seniors. Tyler and Brandon help Jared with his bath and get him dressed. Then, with Brandon getting the wheelchair and the textbooks, Tyler throws Jared over his shoulder, just like a big sack of flour, and the boys bound back up the steep stairs to breakfast.

Jared, also intensely bright, goes to school about a half-day and spends the rest at the Boston Medical Center where, in the Christopher and Dana Reeve NeoRecovery Network, he is hoisted inside a huge contraption where he, once strapped in, literally runs in place while a team of therapists work his arms, his legs and his torso.

According to Dr. Steve Williams, the medical director at the center, “Many of the cells at the level of his injury did not die but were initially stunned and failed to work. They are now waking up and transmitting messages from the brain down the spinal cord.”

That’s all well and good but Jared’s work ethic, his never-complain attitude and his linebacker-like charge at the quadriplegia itself has now affected the thousands who are watching. “Jared has become a teacher for everyone in our school community,” guidance counselor Deborah Tierney told Bob Hohler, a gifted writer at the Boston Globe recently.

School headmaster Edwin Hardiman said the same thing. “The impact he has made has been nothing short of inspiring. He has done yeoman’s work to improve his condition, and he’s done it by himself, without any fanfare or expecting any favors.”

Following his initial trauma treatment last year, Jared was taken to the world-famed Shepherd Spine Center in Atlanta where his invincible spirit, his dazzling drive, and his will to overwhelm the worst of odds was first noticed.

But there is also this: every afternoon Jared returns to school where he stands in the bitter northeastern wind, cold, and – sometimes – even the pelting rain with his teammates, watching and cheering at football practice.

Not long ago the writer Hohler watched as one huge lineman silently stepped in front of Jared to shield him from the wind. At the same time, without a word being said, other players nearby pulled his sweatshirt hood up behind his neck and took turns massaging his shoulders. Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to.

“They do things for Jared that doesn’t come naturally to adolescent males,” said veteran coach Jim O'Leary. “He and his wheelchairs have broken a lot of barriers.” O'Leary, who almost quit coaching when Jared was initially paralyzed, said Jared is not only the hardest worker on the team, but his spirit is the best he’s seen in 38 years of coaching. “He’s still a football player. He still loves the game.”

Now I have to let you in on a secret. Later this month, on Thanksgiving Day when St. John’s Prep faces arch-rival Xaverian Brothers High, Jared’s teammates have whispered to a few insiders they’ll vote for him to be a captain with his brothers Tyler and Brandon.

Only that ain’t the secret.

No, on Thanksgiving Day when the captains walk to the middle of the field for the coin flip, Jared plans to walk – once again, to walk – with Tyler and Brandon and offer his hand to the rival captains. Such is the mettle of warriors … and the Coppola triplets.

How do you reckon the post-game Thanksgiving dinner is going to taste?