A miracle run

Gary Dudgeon
Greensburg Daily News

May 21, 2008 12:15 am

— Thursday, North Decatur’s Tanner Derflinger raced to a first-place finish in the face of a driving rain at the boys’ sectional track meet at East Central.
“Tanner is determined,” Coach Denny Crowe said, “He’s so quick on his starts and uses his determination to hold off the other runners.”
And determination is what Derflinger always needs when he laces up the running shoes. There is a very high probability that he will be the only runner in the field with a titanium rod holding his right leg together.
He was injured when an opponent was blocked into him on the opening kick-off in the fourth game of the 2006 North football season. The Knightstown player fell into Derflinger breaking both the fibula and the tibia, the long bones that connect the ankle and knee.
When Tanner’s mother talked to the doctor, things seemed dire.
“When Tanner broke his leg I was terrified when I saw the X-rays,” reported his mother, Sara Hancock. “The break looked to be very severe, and I wondered if he would ever walk on it again”
The bones were crushed so badly that the orthopedic surgeons inserted the rod to stabilize the leg and give it structure around which it could heal.
“They definitely ruled out track and football this year,” Derflinger said.
He needed determination to make himself walk after the injury, particularly after four months in which he could not put weight on the leg. After a slightly belated Christmas gift in the form of being able to support himself on that leg, Derflinger began to walk and then jog. He worked hard at his rehabilitation using the Chargers’ exercise room.
“I was working out to get my strength back and drinking lots of milk to help it heal,” Derflinger said.
So determined was Derflinger to get into shape for the 2007 track season that he began running by the first of March, less than six months after his injury. When the call went out in March that year for athletes interested in running track, Derflinger responded.
He quickly proved what medical professionals said wouldn’t happen in 2008 did happen in 2007. The response wasn’t that of the fourth sprinter needed to fill out the 4X100-meter relay team, either. It was the response of one who runs the lead leg on the relay. He was also the squad’s leading sprinter in the 100-meter dash as well.
Derflinger gave a simple reason.
“I’m quicker out of the blocks then the other guys, so I run the lead lap,” he said.
When track season was over, Derflinger turned his attention to football.
Three months after the end of track season, Derflinger was front and center to lead the stable of running backs available to football coach Jim Louder, his past injury notwithstanding. His presence was in, and of, itself a source of motivation for those around him.
After the football season, he was nominated for the National Football Foundation’s Scholar-Athlete team. He wasn’t selected, but he was given special recognition based on his leadership and his determination just to be on the field.
This track season, he again answered the call as a top sprinter. This year he had additional support. He and Kyle Lusk dueled for the top spot with Lusk often prevailing.
“Towards the middle of the season, we were going back and forth over who had won what,” Derflinger reported.
Thursday, Derflinger crossed the line first. Lusk was third and both head to Connersville tomorrow to compete at the regional level in the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s state tournament series.
Derflinger’s experience has given him a changed perspective in what he intends to do with his life. He accepted an Army ROTC scholarship to South Alabama University and will be taking pre-medicine courses hoping to become an orthopedic surgeon.
“Dr. Mark Ritter (who treated Derfinger) continues to follow Tanner in his sporting events and is excited about Tanner wanting to get into medicine,” Hancock said.
The miracle continues, at least for another week, but every time he takes a step or steps onto the track, it’s a miracle and it goes beyond the methods of medical science. It’s credited to the miracle of the human spirit.

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