Middle School football game nearly turns tragic

A potentially tragic situation at Corbin’s Campbell Field Saturday afternoon has taken a turn for the better, according to Corbin Middle School football coach Brent Jackson Saturday night.

An eighth-grade football player for the visiting Glasgow Middle School football team had to be flown from the scene after a "high-speed collision" with a Corbin player left the youngster from Glasgow motionless on the field for about 30 minutes.

As of 10 p.m. Saturday evening though, Jackson said things had taken a turn for the better.

“We were moving the ball with about seven minutes to play in the game and we ran a simple sweep,” Jackson said. “The two kids met at full speed and the Glasgow player basically took the brunt of the blow as his head gear met around the chest area of our guy.

“He went down and he couldn’t move at all and they ended up flying him out from the field,” Jackson added. “The good news is that I talked to the coach within the past hour and the kid has regained movement in all four extremities, so they think he is out of the woods.”

Corbin was trailing a score of 14-8 at the time of the injury. Jackson said after the incident, the obvious choice was to call the game.

“Our guys and their guys were pretty shaken up after that, so we thought that was the obvious thing to do,” Jackson said.

Corbin Fire Department, Knox County EMS and LifeNet air transport team out of London responded to the scene. For a more detailed version of this story see Wednesday’s edition of The News Journal.