The piece of metal that held together Jordyn Slaughter’s broken left ankle for months is still in his leg – and it’s going to be there forever. Sometimes he can feel the hard, sharp material holding his ankle together.
That piece of metal has caused Slaughter to feel all sorts of emotions. He’s been sad, he’s been happy, he’s been determined, he’s felt like a victim of an unfair situation and he’s felt challenged since his ankle snapped on the first day of padded practice in last summer’s training camp.
The injury occurred after a teammate got tangled up with Slaughter’s left leg, and all the pressure, twisting and pulling was too much for the ankle to hold strong under.
This wasn’t how Slaughter’s first training camp under then first-year head coach Bret Bielema was supposed to go. For three years, Slaughter didn’t get much of an opportunity to compete on game days under former head coach Lovie Smith.
But Bielema recognized something in Slaughter’s film that he liked – and Slaughter had been doing his darndest for months to impress the new coaching staff in hopes of getting an opportunity to take over the one open starting spot on the offensive line.
On one play, all the hours spent building, preparing for the season that had made Slaughter one of the favorites to be one of the Illini’s best options at right guard was worthless because his season was done before the season even started.
“As soon as I got hurt, the first thing I told Jeremy Busch, our trainer, was ‘it was my time, why me,’” Slaughter said on Tuesday after the Illini’s fourth of 15 spring football practice. “I questioned a lot of things but I just knew that it was a bigger reason as to why I got hurt. After a while, I went with it and just tried to get my way back on the field.”
Before Slaughter could get back on the field though, he had to learn how to use a scooter, the kind with a cushioned place for his left leg to rest while he wheeled around campus. He then had to learn how to walk again – and that was so painful that at times he wanted to go back to the scooter. He couldn’t even get out of bed and walk to brush his teeth in the morning for the first six weeks after the procedure was performed on his left ankle.
“It was a lot of restraint,” he said with a clear sense of reflection in his tone and look in his eye. “Because just trying to not get out of the bed and stand up, was the biggest thing for me because I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand up – learning to adjust to life.
I think the biggest challenge for me was walking again, I was on a scooter for six weeks. I was asking the trainers if I was ready to walk and they were just like ‘No.’ Then when I finally walked again, I was on crutches and that was like the worst experience of my life. I would rather be on the scooter than walk.”
The broken bones in Slaughter’s ankle could have kept him out for an entire year, but he was cleared to get back on the practice field as a full participant after just seven months, and he was close to a full participant in the offseason strength and conditioning program. It was March 8 when the doctors told him that his ankle had strengthened enough to be a full participant in spring football practices.
“When I met with the doctor and he told me that I was good to go,” Slaughter said. “ I called my mom, dad and sat in my car and cried for 10 months because I knew the work that I put in to get there. It could have been a year-long recovery, but it was only six months. Just to work that off, was a blessing for me.”
Last Saturday, the Illini had their first padded practice of the spring – the first time that Slaughter had put the full set of pads on since that late summer practice when the ankle broke. This presented another obstacle for Slaughter to swerve around.
“It was a long seven months just trying to get my min mentally right, especially last week on the first day of pads because I got hurt literally the first day of pads in summer camp,” Slaughter said. “That day was a big one for me. I talked to Coach (Bart) Miller, just mentally trying to block that out of my head and focus on the tat at hand, and try to get better than I was last year.”
Slaughter estimates that he is at about 90% health right now, and he acknowledges that he does still have some things to accomplish. Particularly, getting his conditioning back to the necessary levels for playing what could be a large number of snaps.
“He popped up there at guard and has been very impressive,” Bielema said of Slaughter’s play this spring. “I think the injury he had, there’s going to be this transitional time where it’s just getting used to running and firing and using that leg full go. He’s through practices, has been very impressive. I think he’s the one who realizes he’s got to get that stamina back up to where it’s been. When you can’t play football for that long, just playing football for a two-hour practice just in itself is a chore. Very impressed with his demeanor, his work ethic and his recall.”
Slaughter is far from guaranteed a starting spot on an Illinois offensive line that will look a lot different this fall. Both Vederian Lowe and Doug Kramer are gone, and will likely be playing in the NFL come the fall. Blake Jeresaty and Jack Badovinac are out of eligibility.
So, the Illini offensive line has some new faces this spring. Julian Pearl and Alex Palczewski both figure to be starters, but the other three spots are available to Slaughter, Alex Pihlstrom, junior college transfers Isaiah Adams and Zy Crisler. Illinois is also giving an opportunity to younger offensive linemen this spring too.
But after six months of rehabilitation for a broken left ankle, Slaughter is taking things slowly and not taking his opportunity to practice for granted, not that he did before. But now, he is more aware of what this sport means to him – and he wants to cherish that every day.
“I’m trying to take it day-by-day,” Slaughter said. ‘I can’t look too far ahead. I can’t look ahead to August and our first game. I have to take it day-by-day and learn from every mistake that I’ve made in practice.”
