Monday, April 25, 2011

Todd Porter, Canton Repository

NORTH CANTON  Days start early. They end late.

Austin Appleby doesn’t have a choice. The North Canton Hoover High School

quarterback has it all.

He is 6-foot-5, 225 pounds, and smart as a whip in the classroom and on the field.

He has a thunderbolt of a right arm, but he also has the soft touch of a pillow in the

back corner of the end zone.

Appleby also has something else: Something to prove.

His right knee was shredded during the first quarter in the eighth game of the

season against McKinley in October. He remembers the play as if it were yesterday,

not six months ago.

“I was in the pocket, and things broke down,” Appleby said one day last week in

between therapy sessions. “The four d-linemen for McKinley are pretty good, so I

snuck up the middle, and I was scrambling for a first down. Then I went to the left

sideline by our bench.”

Appleby needed 10 yards and got 11 for a first down. He had his sights set on

running over a McKinley defensive back.

“He got lower than I did,” Appleby said. “And he hit me just wrong. I popped up and

thought it was a Charlie horse. When I got to the huddle, things didn’t feel right.”

His world, as a blue-chip college quarterback recruit, was shattered.

Appleby tore the ACL and MCL in his right knee. Trainers and doctors at the game knew what had happened. Preliminary tests at Fawcett Stadium indicated torn ligaments. Read More...

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Appleby keeping his dream alive

Hoover's Austin Appleby