As a TMP-Marian alum, it is good to see TMP back up to 4A after spending the last few years at 3A. Plus, it's nice to know that this animal is back on the mat.


All access Tait Weatherbee: One hundred nineteen days

Jan. 15, 2006
By NABIL SHAHEEN

Hays Daily News

The sleepless night didn't help any. Nor did cutting weight all week.

It took a while to hit him what was about to happen, but now that it's here he's nervous.

The pale face, the look in his eyes deep and dark in their sockets and the ever-so-slight limp.

It had been 119 days, exactly 17 weeks to the day.

That's 2,856 hours of waiting. That's 171,360 minutes of doubt, soul-searching and trying to erase that doubt. That's 10,281,600 grueling seconds waiting for this very moment.

He's jogging in place a little bit now. Pacing behind his team's bench.

Finally the time has come, and he takes off his head phones with Rage Against The Machine vocalist Zack de la Rocha still shouting the energetic words to “Killing in the Name.”

His parents, siblings, grandparents and numerous others are here. They, too, had wondered about this moment.

And as he checks in at the scorer's table, adrenaline is about to burst through — nearly erasing the memory of those three September surgeries in six days; those two once broken bones in his left leg now healed and empowered by a titanium rod and those frustrating days of nearly no movement whatsoever.

That was all behind him now.

Thomas More Prep-Marian senior Tait Weatherbee was back.

His weight had fluctuated nearly 20 pounds since September, but here was the standout wrestler at 130 pounds in a match starting a season that at one point was in serious jeopardy of even happening.

Plainville sophomore Derek Brummit entered the circle first and in came the nervous Weatherbee, wearing a black air cast that covered his left leg from just below the knee cap to the ankle.

“This whole week has been real tough cutting weight and working out and trying to maintain it,” Weatherbee said. “Just trying to get back in the groove of it has been real tough. It's been draining.”

The restless nerves were calmed immediately by the sound of the referee's whistle as the match began.

He was tentative to start the match but exactly 13 seconds into it went on the ruthlessly aggressive style that had become his trademark and he got a takedown.

“After that first takedown I felt really comfortable,” he said. “It gives you a cushion of what you can and can't do.”

As Plainville coach D.J. Basgall summed it up — “it was typical Weatherbee.”

But Sept. 9 was a far from typical day.

That Friday morning in Ellis, Brandon Pfeifer, Weatherbee's wrestling coach since the sixth grade, got out of bed with what turned out to be a surreal sixth sense.

“This is a bad deal, but I woke up that morning, just not feeling good,” Pfeifer said. “I even told my wife, ‘It's just not a good day, something bad is going to happen.' She said ‘Well, I hope you don't get electrocuted.”

As Pfeifer made his way to downtown Hays for work on the new Nex-Tech building, he was working with Dennis Budke who asked him about that night's football game between the Monarchs and Abilene.

“I said I just got this God-awful feeling,” Pfeifer said. “I just hope nobody gets hurt. That night we were shopping at Wal-Mart, and Dennis Budke called. He said your worst nightmare just happened.”

In Abilene the Monarchs broke the huddle with 3:48 left in the second quarter.

“I remember being in the huddle and them saying toss right,” Weatherbee said later. “I was like (he sighs) all right. I don't really like tosses. I'm not real fast, but I'm quick up the middle. So it's like ‘dang it' but I said all right I'll do it.”

TMP-Marian leading 6-0 and driving on the Cowboy 9-yard line.

“I ran the toss play, I remember getting it and running up the sideline then cutting back, and then I just got hit,” Weatherbee recalled five weeks after that play. “I could feel my leg just pop. For a second, it hurt and then after that I couldn't feel anything at all.”

The severity of the hit — a gang tackle to get him out of bounds — had yet to settle in.

“At first I thought maybe it's a deep bruise or something. I actually tried to get back up and that was just a bad idea. I kind of fell back down and then I laid there and, I don't know, I just went blank for a little bit.”

He stayed on the ground and seconds became minutes as the crowd was hushed to a stunned silence.

“These are things you read about other people but you never think your own kid,” said Deb Weatherbee, Tait's mother. “I guess I know how much Tait loves football, and he gives 110 percent in everything he does. I looked down, and I could see it. It didn't break the skin, but it was like when your hand is under your shirt and you push it out.”

Mom immediately turned away and was met by her husband, Gary, on the track.

“I remember looking down seeing Tait squeezing Coach Flax's hand and right then, I don't remember what I thought, I just knew Tait doesn't react like that. That's not him,” his mother said.

Surrounding Tait were paramedics, Abilene trainers, assistant coach T.J. Gottschalk — a good friend of the family and “one of my favorite coaches,” — and head coach Gene Flax, who was now in his eighth straight year of coaching a Weatherbee on his football team.

“I remember Coach Flax,” Weatherbee said. “My leg was about at 45 (degrees), and they had to move it back in to set it. When they did that I had to hold coach Flax's hand, and I remember he had his ring on. I held pretty tight on that. I think he might have gotten a cut from it. That was the worst part, when they were moving it back and forth because I could feel the bones in my leg grind against each other and everything. It got pretty gruesome.”

Weatherbee was taken off the field in a stretcher, and, for the first time in his athletic career, he realized that this was a lot bigger than a tough-it-out injury.

“I really didn't know what to think when the paramedics got there,” he said. “This is my ninth year of football, and I've never missed a game or had an injury that cost me to miss a game. Then all of a sudden I get a season-ending one. It was pretty dramatic. It was rough.”

Through all this his sister, Tahnee, a sophomore cheerleader for the Monarchs, maintained and cheered with her teammates at halftime then getting consoled by other Monarch parents afterwards.

“It was weird,” she said. “You don't picture him getting hurt. He's, like, indestructible.”

TMP-Marian failed to score on that drive and in the end outgained Abilene in almost every category possible but dropped the game, 14-6.

“I feared for the worst, and it was basically the worst that could happen to us,” Flax said. “It was pretty much cut and dry. Anytime a kid plants, something's gotta give. That surely was something you would hope wouldn't be as serious as it was.”

It indeed was very serious.

At Abilene Memorial Hospital, the X-rays revealed what was worst feared.

“The fact that I even broke it seemed almost impossible,” Weatherbee said. “I've been through so much and survived so much and the fact that I broke my leg it's just like, wow.”

Not only a break, but two breaks to both the tibia and fibula in his left leg. With pressure quickly starting to build and circulation to the leg in danger of being cut off, a decision had to quickly be made.

An ambulance took Weatherbee to Manhattan where surgery was immediately performed upon arrival.

The meticulous operation began with cuts down both sides of his leg to alleviate the building pressure and allow the blood to reflow. It started at 11:30 p.m. Friday and went through 6 a.m. Saturday.

Tait spent that entire weekend in the intensive care unit.

“I remember waking up Saturday morning, and that's when everything started coming to me,” Weatherbee said. “And that was pretty rough. Wow. I was just shocked.”

Saturday night was another surprise, not from the injury but from a visitor just back from a football game at Marshall University.

Standing by his side was Kansas State University standout football player Marcus Watts, a Hays High School alumnus and good friend of the Weatherbees and older brother Tanner.

“It meant a lot,” Weatherbee said. “When I saw him come in, it's like, whoa. We knew him pretty well, but when he came in that meant a lot. He was like, the doctors here in Manhattan are some of the best orthopedic ones.”

“My mom called me and let me know what happened,” Watts said. “I've known that family for a long time. I played with Tanner when we were younger in sports so we've known each other for a while. I just felt that I could go up there and maybe help cheer him up a little bit. It's a tough time for him and I went through an injury my senior year too, so I know what it feels like. I'm hoping that he can get back and wrestle because that's his sport.”

That Monday was another operation. Doctors drilled just below his knee cap and into the bone to insert a titanium rod to strengthen the bone and the healing.

Dr. William Jones did not like what he saw. So he took the rod — no wider than the top of your pinkie finger — and tried it again.

Six days and three operations after the initial injury, Weatherbee was 24 hours away from the Monarchs next football game, Homecoming against Larned at Lewis Field Stadium.

“I really wanted to be back for Homecoming,” he said, “especially being my senior year and everything. That was my biggest motivation to try to get through all the surgeries.”

Much like the rest of this journey, he would will his way back on Sept. 16. Weatherbee — on crutches — arrived in Al Billinger Fieldhouse where his unsuspecting teammates were preparing for the short bus ride to the stadium.

“My dad took me down to the fieldhouse and when I walked in it got real quiet,” he said. “Everyone looked over and it's just like, wow. I was a little pale and still drugged up from surgery.”


n n n


As October draws to a close, this is when rehab gets difficult for Weatherbee. Wrestling was just about two weeks away.

“Once we go to the wrestling meets, I'm going to get anxious and just be dying to get on the mat,” he said. “It's going to give me more of a drive to get on the mat and show everyone. I kind of have a statement to make, that I'm back.”

On Nov. 15 the Monarchs report to practice. All Weatherbee can be is a physical presence. He has become an extension of the coaching staff.

One of the tournaments that bugs him most is the Colby Invitational, Dec. 9, where he has never been beat — 21-0 since wrestling there as a freshman.

At the team's first meet of the season Nov. 29, he is yet again restrained to just sitting.

“Yesterday it hit hard,” he said at the next day's practice. “You do all this stuff to work up to this point, but you don't get to do anything except sit there and watch. It's kind of heartbreaking just sitting there, and I can't do anything at all. No matter what I wanted to do or how hard I begged or anything, I couldn't get on the mat at all. Sitting there was — I don't know — it was tough.”

The next day, Dec. 1, would be the team's only home meet. And with the Monarchs moving to Class 4A, it would be Weatherbee's only chance to compete in Hays. But all he could do was sit patiently and encourage his teammates.

“It's going to be rough,” he said of the meet. “I'm not going to enjoy it probably at all. It's going to be rough being there. My last home dual ever, I'm a senior, state is not here anymore, it's all momentum and brings me down big time.”

Even when he mimics wrestling in the practice room, doubt begins to creep in and his mind is providing a greater hurdle than he thought it would.

“When I shadow wrestle and somebody makes a cut move, I'm starting to get real fragile in my mind about my leg, and I need to get past that. I need to act like nothing has happened and wrestle like I always have, be aggressive and everything,” he said. “I'm trying to mostly get mentally prepared so that I won't be as fragile anymore.”

The home dual comes, and Weatherbee is again resorted to his seat.

He's excited, almost bobbing and weaving with each of his teammates' matches. He cups his hands to his mouth and shouts encouragement and advice.

But again, he wonders what kind of shape he's really in.

“When I'm on the mat and someone doesn't move, I'll think about 20 different moves in a split second, then pick one out that seems perfect,” he said. “It's like I'm telling myself to do that, but my feet aren't doing it. They're kind of lagging behind, and I'm trying to get all that movement back, all my quickness. My brain is still doing it and clicking, but I need to get my body in shape now.”

n n n

At the Center for Health Improvement, the workouts become more grueling.

Not only are more repetitions and workout stations being added but Weatherbee is adding the workout load with Shawn Landers — certified athletic trainer and strength and conditioning specialist — on top of his two-hour after school wrestling practices.

“Tait works pretty hard,” Landers said. “He's putting in about twice the time most the team is doing. The hard thing for him is trying to progress slowly. He was expecting to jump in and get back to normal.”

What was mostly upper body is now altered based on time of the wrestling season and what will eventually be Weatherbee's return to the mat.

“Before it was just working on cardiovascular and upperbody stuff, and now we have focused on strengthening the knee and the ankle. He's not full speed, but it's just a continual process.”

The progress faces a big challenge Dec. 8 when Weatherbee visits Dr. William Jones for a checkup that will be the ultimate tell-tale sign of how soon he could return to the mat.

The answer the family got was something no one had even imagined.

“It was shocking,” Tait said. “We figured that I'd come back in January some time. “But when he told us I have 10 days left, it was shocking. Pretty cool. Unexpected.”

Of course, it also meant that shaping up will have to accelerate.

“I've been eating this whole time,” the near 140-pound Weatherbee said. “It's like I eat whatever I want whenever I want. Now I have to cut myself off, and that's a big shock for my body.”

“It's a lot of pressure on Tait, I can tell you that,” Pfeifer said. “Anywhere from the media to friends and family, they all want to know where Tait's at. I've been trying to hold back and hopefully let the results show by themselves and hopefully let the pressure down a little bit.”

Weatherbee commits to a Jan. 6 dual at Plainville, the first match of 2006 for the Monarchs.

“I want to come back wrestling with a vengeance,” he said. “Watching football and not being able to hit anyone, I have a lot built up.”

As school and practice resume, there is a sense of excitement in the wrestling room at TMP-Marian. He had been with his teammates this whole season, but here he was a varsity contender about to make his return.

“A lot of them are happy to have him back but it's just nice to have a team leader back,” Coach Pfeifer said. “Hopefully everything goes his way because it is his senior year. Nobody likes to see the good guy in the movie get killed, and it's the same thing in sports and the star athlete getting hurt.”

With no basketball for PHS that Friday night, the gym started filling with Plainville fans applauding their seniors on Senior Night and Monarch fans watching their team and the return of their star.

“On the way down it really wasn't bad. But once that adrenaline got pumped up, I was real nervous,” he said. “It really hit me, and my stomach really started turning right before my match.”

The Cardinals won the first three matches by pins and then a forfeit at 125.

“The guys before you just got beat and that really ticks you off,” Weatherbee said. “That's what I did I just took it out on my guy. I did what I had to do.”

After the takedown went out of bounds, the wrestlers reset in the middle of the circle and Weatherbee let Brummit stand up.

“I just think it's built up so much ever since that last football game,” Weatherbee said. “I've been wanting to hit someone and take it to 'em. I think it's just all built up from there.”

It was 119 days of worrying, wondering and realizing that this day would eventually come.

There is a little pain, but excitement proves stronger than any painkiller.

“During the match I had so much adrenaline, I couldn't feel it,” he said. “But after the match I could feel a little bit of pain in my knee. But I just went out there with determination. I wanted to be as aggressive as I usually am and just take it to him.”

And in 111 seconds, Weatherbee erased all doubt, made short work of Brummit and picked up the 124th win of his career.

More importantly, he was 1-0 in the 2006 season and back in varsity competition.

“I'm more comfortable now that I have a match under my belt,” he said. “It's awesome. I finally got a match won. I've been waiting for it ever since last year to come back and redeem myself. This is just a great feeling.”

he is still not 100% and never will be. if he keeps up wrestling he is injur him self for life

I appreciate your sharing this story with us coach - great stuff!

I'm sure that's something he's already been told and thought about himself. I also don't think his Dr. would have let him wrestle earlier than expected if he weren't 100%.

big bad wolf,

do you have a sister named Debbie Downer?

Great article! Thanks coach!

The article gives us an idea of this young ahletes great character and strong work ethic.

I believe big bad wolf should stay away from cheerios which have a yellow liquid in the bowl instead of the white liquid, it MAY assist with his disposition.

he was 1-0 in the 2006 thats not right the matches he couldent wreslte count as a loss by the hand book so as hays daily said his record is 13-0 that isnt right. The kid is a good wrestler. the hays daily needs to get the record right.

The matches a wrestler does not wrestle do not count against the wrestlers record unless the wrestler reports to the scorer's table.

Alex...did you see the Debbie Downer skit on Saturday Night Live? Hilarious!

No I haven't... sorry

Also I seen Weatherbee wrestle this weekend in a match again Shane Hall of Ellsworth, you can tell he's missed the mat time this fall. He was caught in a bad position a coulpe time (on his back) nothing serious (no back points scored but still scary) but if it woulda been against someone decent it could have been problems.

At the 2006 Hays Prairie Classic at 130 lbs.

1st - Tait Weatherbee THOMAS MORE PREP Fall Jon Baumfalk HAYS, 1:32