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"I Have No Idea What's Going On"; Northwest Kansas Mom Surprised by Son Scoring One Final Touchdown
Over in St. Francis, a senior on the football team got a moment that felt like the movies. Zarik Enfield, a senior at St. Francis High School, is in a wheelchair, and has been since his Freshman year. After an accident involving a pickup truck, it left Zarik paralyzed in his legs, unable to walk, but also unable to play one of his favorite sports, football.
Lucas Kenney, News Director with NWKS Radio, got to visit with Zarik and his mom Ana about the accident, the recovery process afterwards, and a special moment Zarik got to partake in on senior night.
First off, when talking about the accident, Zarik explained that he was out driving a pickup truck when it started to act funny. He was an inexperienced driver and couldn't handle the vehicle correctly, so him and the vehicle ended up in the ditch.
When Ana arrived on the scene after noticing his location had not moved and he wasn't answering his phone, Zarik could not feel his legs. First responders arrived on the scene, took him to the Cheyenne County Hospital, before flying him to Children's Hospital Colorado.
There, he was diagnosed with a T-12 burst fracture and had other complications as a result of that injury. One of them is known as SPAM (Subacute Posttraumatic Ascending Myelopathy), a very rare complication of a spinal injury.
This injury led to a very intense few months of rehab, which included many things, and one of note that Zarik found humorous, was doing a full circle in the wheelchair while popping a wheely. Throughout this rehab, both Zarik and his family had to learn many new ways to go about everyday life, and when asked about what got him through it, Zarik said he just took it one day at a time.
Moving into the special moment on the football field this season, Ana had posted a video to her Facebook of Zarik putting on a helmet and heading onto the field with his teammates for one final time. They lined up by the goal line, handed the ball off to Zarik, and he crossed into the endzone for the touchdown.
Throughout the video, you can hear Ana say that she had no idea what was going on, and that was because Zarik had kept this a secret from his family to surprise them on senior night. Even he himself didn't know if it could happen, but when he approached head coach Hoagie Carmichael of the St. Francis Indians football team, he was all for it.
Carmichael, who took the mantel of head high school football coach this year, also was Zarik's junior high football coach. Zarik had extremely high praises for Hoagie, crediting him for teaching him and the many other players on the team how to be great players as well as great men off the field.
Zarik also alluded to how supportive his teammates were of the moment, saying that they had joked throughout his high school tenure that he should go out for a free touchdown every game, but when it came time for the actual moment to arrive, they were all for it.
Ana spoke about how she loves to video and take pictures of many moments she deems important, and senior night was of course going to be one of those moments, but after the senior and parent presentations, Zarik had told her that she's definitely going to want to video something coming up. Despite the warning, Ana was still very pleasantly surprised to see her son dawn a football helmet and carry the ball again.
They also wanted to shoutout the Greeley County football team for their generosity in allowing Zarik to score in that moment. It just goes to show that small town Kansas is full of amazing people.
Lastly, when asked to give a message to someone going through something similar, Zarik noted that it will not be fun or easy but hearing about the different stories from people with similar injuries and paths, he knew it could be done. Ana also added the phrase "never ever give up", just as she had seen her son do.
You can listen to the full interview with Zarik and Ana above, as well as check out the pictures and video from Ana's Facebook post.
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