Pulling Through After a Big Scare

As a last-second Hail Mary pass fell incomplete Friday night at Granada Hills High, center Tony Martin of Birmingham dropped to his knees and wept over his team’s 25-22 loss.

A bit later, teammates and coaches were praying Martin wouldn’t become another high school football player to die mysteriously moments after a game.

Thankfully, Martin wasn’t.

Martin was resting at home Saturday night after an overnight stay at Northridge Hospital Medical Center for what was diagnosed as muscle spasms in both legs as part of an ordeal in which paramedics employed the jaws of life to remove him from the team bus.

Moments after arriving at Birmingham’s Van Nuys campus, Martin, a 270-pound junior affectionately known as “Biggie,” collapsed near the rear of the bus--the confines of which provide little in the way of elbow room.

“It was a big bus,” Martin said. “But I’m big too.”

Martin’s sudden complaint of a headache and numbness in his legs alarmed teammates and coaches, and understandably so.

Last month, Reseda High player Eric Hoggatt was found dead in his bed the morning after a home game against Chatsworth. A coroner’s report eventually concluded that Hoggatt died from a blow to the head sustained during the game.

A week after Hoggatt’s death, quarterback Adrian Taufaasau of Coronado High in San Diego died of head injuries suffered two days earlier in a game against Costa Mesa.

“That was all running through my mind,” said Birmingham running back Emmanuel Evans, who sat in front of Martin on the bus. “He just stopped talking and then said, ‘I can’t move.’

“I thought he was playing around. It was right when we pulled up. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was scared.”

Quarterback Scott Doherty, among the first players off the bus, was unaware of his teammate’s troubles until he had entered the locker room, changed clothes and returned to the bus.

“I came out and I just saw an ambulance coming,” Doherty said. “I thought, ‘What’s happening?’ ”

Birmingham Coach Dave Lertzman said that because of the narrow aisles and small seats on the bus “anybody other than a kindergarten kid” would have been in the same predicament.

As a precaution, Lertzman said, paramedics removed Martin from the bus on a board but were forced to first remove several seats.

“He was coherent the entire time,” Lertzman said. “He could move his hands and feet.”

Rhonda Buchanan, Martin’s mother, attended the game and arrived at Birmingham just as the commotion was starting. Buchanan rushed to her son’s side.

“They said something was wrong with my son,” she said. “He told me his legs were numb.”

Buchanan spent the night with her son at the hospital after Martin underwent a battery of tests.

“He’s fine,” Buchanan said. “They ran tests and scans for six hours. They did an excellent job.”

About the only person not frightened by the ordeal, it seemed, was Martin.

“I wasn’t scared, to tell you the truth,” Martin said. “I knew I was OK. I stood up and my legs went out on me. I was just thinking that my legs were hurting.”

As for his headache, Martin said he simply had, well, a headache. But he cannot recall a specific play or collision in which he was hurt.

Players Evans and Doherty described Martin as physically sound during the game.

“He was fine,” Doherty said. “Really intense. He was giving hits, not taking them.”

Staff Writer Martha Willman contributed to this report.