By Jim Halley, USA TODAY
Special to MaxPreps.com
Ryan Kocer has wrestled his way to three South Dakota high school titles. Last Aug. 25, though, the 17-year-old from the Great Lakes region of the state was pinned by an opponent he couldn't handle — a two-ton pickup — and lost a leg.
Kocer (pronounced coach-er), who also played football for Wagner High School, had run for two touchdowns the previous day as his Red Raiders defeated Miller Area 35-0 in the first game of the season.
To help celebrate the big win the next night, Kocer decided to hang out with his friends in a parking lot in town.
"I said, 'Well, it's kind of late,' " his father, Don, said. "And he stayed home and he was fine with staying home."
But his friends called again and Kocer decided to sneak out of the house around 11 p.m. after his parents went to bed.
Because it was a warm evening, the windows at his house were open. Not to wake his parents, Kocer put his Ford 250 pickup in neutral and pushed it down the driveway.
When the truck began to get away from him and headed toward a grain bin, he tried to stop it by pushing back.
Kocer slipped on the dewy grass and was pinned between the truck and the grain bin. When the pickup rocked backward, he rolled away. In the short time he was pinned, the vehicle's weight had broken the tibia in his right leg and crushed the knee cap of his left.
As both legs swelled with fluid, he tried calling the house with his cellphone but the service was spotty and it rang only once. He crawled to the truck and honked the horn to wake his parents, in bed a quarter-mile away. His mother, Jody, heard the noise and awoke her husband.
They drove Kocer to a nearby hospital and then helicoptered to a bigger facility in Sioux Falls. When he awoke after 10 hours of surgery, his left foot was gone. An artery had been pinched and his foot had no blood flow. Doctors also put a rod in his broken right leg.
One of the first questions Kocer asked his doctors was whether he could wrestle again. His parents just wondered if he would survive.
"There was a period of time where things were bad and we would try to be optimistic, but things just got worse," his father said.
Three days after the accident, doctors realized they couldn't save Kocer's lower left leg and amputated up to the mid-shin. Four days after that, his leg was amputated just above the knee.
Community Support
Wagner houses 900 students from pre-K to 12th grade. The school has produced 27 individual state wrestling champions and won the state B dual team title for the second season in a row this month.
"I would say we are a wrestling community," says Wagner principal Neil Goter, who is also the school's athletic director.
The farms that surround the Kocer's 2,000-acre farm and ranch six miles south of town are owned by families who also have sons who wrestle. Wrestling meets are a social activity as friends catch up with each other and infants wear tiny polo shirts that say, "Future Wagner wrestler."
"Our wrestling family is pretty tight," Wagner coach Ernie Valentine says. "The parents travel together to meets and because of the distances we travel, it's not uncommon for us to leave at 6 in the morning and get back at 10 or 11 at night. They spend so much time together that they become a family and parents support each other's kids."
The Kocers stayed with their son while friends and family took turns caring for the other three children, their house and their farm.
Several benefits were held in Wagner to raise money for the hospital bills. The wrestling team from Mitchell, an hour away, held a benefit golf tournament. The wrestling team from Philip held a benefit dodge ball tournament.
An English teacher at Wagner, Sue Morrell, sent Kocer a note, reminding him what he had written a few days before the accident: "I don't have one thing specifically that I am proud of, but I think that I am extraordinarily proud that I can do anything I want if I want it bad enough."
Off to a Fast Start
Kocer began wrestling with the town's AAU program when he was 4.
He won his first state high school title as an eighth grader, taking the 112-pound class. A knee injury hurt his chances his freshman year and he finished second at state. He won the 152-pound state title his sophomore year and the 171-pound title last year.
In July, he trained at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in July and competed in his weight class at the Junior Nationals in Fargo, N.D., finishing fourth. Big-time wrestling programs such as Nebraska and Missouri sent letters.
Two weeks after the accident, Kocer was well enough to leave the hospital in a wheelchair. On the way home, he talked his parents into a detour to Hawarden, Iowa, to see Wagner's football team defeat West Sioux High 24-21.
By mid-October, his right leg could bear enough weight that he could wear a prosthetic leg and get around with crutches. Told to wear the leg for only an hour the first day, he wore it for 12. Within weeks, the crutches were gone.
"He made it easy for us as parents because of the way he accepted is so well, right away," his father says. "He worked hard in rehab on his own because he knew where he wanted to be."
Back on the Mat
When wrestling practice began in November, Kocer was there. At first, he drove his younger brother Alex, a promising 103-pound eighth-grade wrestler, to practice. As the other wrestlers worked out, Kocer did his homework. Before long, he was practicing with the team, trying to figure out how he would adapt.
"I always thought, 'I want to get back into my normal routine of things.' I wanted to do things I normally do," Kocer says. "Right away, I was hopeful. It didn't happen as quickly as I thought it would."
Instead of his 171-pound weight class, he would wrestle at 152, minus his prosthetic leg. His first meet back was Jan. 5 at The Clash, a national tournament in Rochester, Minn.
"I was pretty excited for it," he says. "I liked getting back on the mat for the first time. It was a pretty good experience. I was pretty nervous."
He won his first match and finished 3-1 at the tournament. In the weeks since he has wrestled well. But because of the pain, he can't always wrestle two weeks in a row.
After getting three pins and his 200th career win to help Wagner win the state dual title, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.
"At every meet he's at, there are four people that don't want to see Ryan win," Goter says. "The kid wrestling, his parents and his coach. Everyone else in the stands is rooting for Ryan."
Last weekend, Kocer earned a trip to the regional meet by finishing second in the District 5B meet in Tyndall. If Kocer, ranked No. 4, can finish in the top four this weekend at the regional meet, he'll get another trip to the state meet.
"I think he has really grown as a person," his mother says. "I don't think the winning in sports is important to him now. It's just going out there with his teammates. Now, it's just whatever happens, happens."
