Illinois HS athlete suffers horrific injury while warming up for triple jump

An Illinois high school track athlete suffered an unimaginable injury while warming up for the triple jump at a meet last month.

Dylan Westcott, of Rock Falls High School, broke his neck in a freak accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. The 18-year-old has been rehabbing at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and has been able to sit in a wheelchair since about a week after the March 15 catastrophe.

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Rock Falls High School head track coach Eric Bontz shared the horrific details in an interview with KWQC-TV.

“He was warming up in the triple jump, just doing run throughs, and as he was going through the sand, he tripped either over his own feet or over the sand, and kind of stumbled, and was kind of running as he was stumbling, and just fell head first into the wall,” Bontz said.

Wescott went through 12 hours of surgery immediately after the accident, according to the Daily Gazette. He had two cages inserted to stabilize his neck with a vertebra was replaced with a titanium plate.

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“You go from being a normal, happy family with, everybody talking about future plans and graduation, prom — he just got accepted to study to be a vet tech after high school — and then seeing him in a wheelchair, not able to do a lot of the things that he used to do,” Westcott’s aunt, Kim Wescott Kilday, told the station. “It really hurts.”

Wescott’s family and coach have praised his resiliency.

A GoFundMe has raised more than $22,000 to help with medical expenses.

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