Iona Prep free safety OK after suffering neck injury

A week after being taken out on a neckboard and stretcher, Jonathan Caban does not know if or when he will play football again. Kevin Armstrong

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. -- He is unable to remember the down or distance, unable to recall the time remaining in the game, but Jonathan Caban, the 5-foot-5 ¼, 160-pound free safety for Iona Prep (New Rochelle, N.Y.), will never forget the play.

On Sept. 14, under the Friday night lights, with the misty rainfall coming down at St. Anthony's (South Huntington, N.Y.) High, Caban closed quickly from his position in the secondary to pursue the Friars wingback running a hitch route. Able to cover the right third of the field on the Gaels' Cowboy Blitz package, there was Caban, wrapping his arms around his counterpart's waist. What he saw next, though, left him in a daze.

"He went to the left, and I went with him," says Caban. "I saw his knee cap [come] straight into my helmet. My neck went back, and I felt a crack on the left side [of my neck] and I got little stinger in my right hand. My head started throbbing. I couldn't get up."

Rushing over from their positions on the sidelines, Iona Prep athletic trainer Brad Maxwell and the St. Anthony's trainers came to his attention. Included in the group was a St. Anthony's father from the stands who is an orthopedic surgeon. "My legs were fine, but my neck hurt so much. They told me not to move," says Caban. "They checked my extremities. What am I feeling? Where am I? What's my address? Do I remember the play?"

Caban never lost consciousness and was able to wriggle his legs. However, his neck was the biggest concern. Unlike the Buffalo Bills' Kevin Everett, who was treated with saline, the high school trainers were not equipped with body temperature altering technology. Not all schools are required to have a paramedics at games, but St. Anthony's typically does. All the while, Caban, a blue-collar Bronx kid from Throgs Neck who had played as a freshman and sophomore but took his junior year off from football to work in his family's newly-opened hardware store, was still writhing in pain. Already a black belt in Tae Kwan Doe, he had never ached like this before.

"You always want to see a guy rolling around in pain if you are going to see an injury," said Maxwell. "He was motionless and just lying there so you knew it was serious. There's nothing worse than seeing no movement."

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