Back on the field
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part feature about USU lacrosse player Max Allen.
With the year anniversary of Max Allen’s car accident just around the corner, the Allens are reflecting on a year of milestones.
“I want to throw a party,” he said.
After all he’s been through, Max Allen probably deserves one. The Utah State lacrosse player survived a horrifying accident and spent months recovering from his multiple injuries. Max Allen woke up in the hospital with a broken pelvis, a broken bone in his neck and a traumatic brain injury.
Now, one year after the accident, Max Allen is back on the lacrosse field. Despite the mounting frustrations, he said he still loves the game.
“It’s been my life,” he said.
Sheree Allen said the family is just glad Dec. 3 will be celebrated as a survival instead of remembering the death of the second-youngest member of their family.
“I’m trying to find the place that Dec. 3 can be a day of celebration,” Sheree Allen said. “It’s the day Max lived.”
A little push
In the past year, every aspect of Max Allen’s life has changed.
“I asked him ‘What in your life is the same, from before the accident to now?'” Sheree Allen said. “He said, ‘Nothing.’ It’s true, nothing is the same.”
In June, Max Allen faced a summer of boredom. He worked one or two days a week at his job. Instead of working a lot, he spent his summer behind a pool cue playing billiards most of the day.
Sheree Allen said while pushing her son to get back on the field made her nervous, she knew it was a challenge he needed to meet. She brought up the idea of playing lacrosse again. She even wrote motivational sayings on the white board in his hospital room.
“My mom told me to go and play,” Max Allen said.
Since the accident Sheree Allen hasn’t been able to watch her son play.
“I want to, because I really want to support him,” Sheree Allen said with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know if I can.”
The beginning
Max Allen first picked up a lacrosse stick when he came home from football practice in 2003 and his brother Mitchell Allen gave him his own. Max Allen said he thought it was a joke but went went along to practice anyway.
“I came home from football practice and made fun of him,” Max Allen said. “He made me go to one of his practices with him and I never went back to football.”
As a 13-year-old hanging around Sky View High School’s practice field, Max Allen started to catch on to the game that he said has become his life. It was at these practices that he met Jess Roberts, one of his best friends.
“He was the annoying little eighth grader that was at every practice and then we all got to know him,” Roberts said. “He kind of just became my little brother after that.”
Roberts was at Max Allen’s first practice ever. Six months after the accident when the now 22-year-old stepped back on the field for the first time, Roberts was there again.
After checking with the doctors who saved his life after the accident, Max Allen joined the Box Elder summer league.
“He seemed nervous but excited,” Roberts said. “Granted, having a broken neck and all that other stuff that had happened to him, he was afraid to get hit.”
On the field in Aggie Blue
With a season of summer league behind him, the Max Allen joined the Utah State lacrosse team.
Repercussions from the accident have left him relearning many of the motions that came easy to him before.
“He gets frustrated a lot just because he’s building back his muscle memory,” longtime teammate Keaton Cluff said.
Cluff said Max Allen has struggled to play at the same level he did before the accident but his attitude hasn’t changed any; He still works hard each and every day to be the best lacrosse player he can be.
Roberts said considering the circumstances, Max Allen is playing amazingly well.
“It was tough to keep up with him. He knew everything about the sport, how to move how to shoot, everything,” Roberts said. “Now he is doing phenomenal compared to what I would have expected of him.”
The attackman is through a full season of Fall ball and said he knows he plays differently now.
“I’m definitely not as fast as I was, I’m afraid to get hit,” Max Allen said. “I just don’t want to be put back in the situation hat I was in.”
If he’s not as fast Atwood said, it’s not by much, but the coach has seen a change in Allen’s play.
“If he is not as fast there’s not a whole lot of difference,” Atwood said. “The thing that I see the most is that he is so frustrated with himself and rightfully so. I definitely could not imagine what he is going through right now having to relearn everything.”
Atwood said having to relearn the sport has caused Max Allen some frustration but he’s pushing through it.
“Even though he may not be as good as he was,” Atwood said. “He still is pretty good. I think he will be as good as he was if not better.”
The hits keep coming
While Allen is back on field in full gear, it’s taken him a while to convince some of the players that he’s ready for full contact. He has gone as far as to tell his teammates that he’s okay with being hit.
“I’ve told the guys that would hit me ‘make sure you hit me’,” Max Allen said.
Sheree Allen said the transition is one that Max Allen has to work at every single day.
“I’ve kind of pushed him to do some things,” Sheree Allen said. “To get out and play lacrosse. To get hit, it’s not going to kill him even though sometimes it feels like it might.”
In game situations, the players on opposing teams have no idea what Allen has been going through the past year. The defense will deliver hits just as they would on any player.
< span class="s2">“His brain is finding that new course,” Sheree Allen said. “How to brace himself, how to react to it, and to get up and keep moving. All those things that are very normal for us to do aren’t so normal for him.”
Max Allen knows the other team won’t go easy on him.
“In the game, there’s no stopping,” Max Allen said. “People on the other team don’t know so I’m just trying to be ready for it.”
Max Allen admits he was nervous when he first stepped back on the field, now he just wants to be treated like he was before- as a lacrosse player. Roberts said at first some of the team was timid around Max.
“There definitely were players who would hang back a lot,” Roberts said.
It’s been a process, but after six months of being on the field, Atwood said the team is beginning to see Max Allen in that light again.
“Honestly, I think everyone on the team sees Max as Max,” Atwood said. “They just play as normal.”
– meredith.kinney@aggiemail.usu.edu
MAX ALLEN PLAYS LACROSSE during one of his first games back with Utah State following his injuries. Photo courtesy Jon Atwood (Jon Atwood)
MAX ALLEN DOES THERAPY during a rehab session. The native of Cove started playing lacrosse again in 2011. Photo courtesy Sheree Allen (Sheree Allen)