'We make our own miracles': How 'spot-on' response saved Keyport football player

From the way Logan Blanks was lying on the ground, Kelly O’Donnell could sense this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill football injury. So the Keyport High School athletic trainer immediately radioed for help from the borough’s first aid squad.

This was during an Oct. 8 game against Lakewood – two weeks after St. John Vianney’s Aaron Van Trease suffered a broken neck in a game, and less than a month after Linden’s Xavier McClain died from a head injury sustained on the field. Donnie Blanks, Logan’s father and Keyport’s strength and conditioning coach, had followed those stories and was on high alert.

“When (Logan) fell and rolled onto his back, it looked familiar,” Blanks said. “We ran out there, Kelly was first, and she took charge.”

Four years removed from graduate school, six years out of college, O’Donnell knelt over Logan and drew on every bit of schooling, training and advice she’s received, summoning a level of composure that is hard to teach, knowing this could be the most critical moment of her career and of a young man’s life.

“We are trained to be put into these situations, and we hope we never have to use that training,” O’Donnell said. “I don’t think anything can really prepare you for the moment. In that moment, when you see a kid go down, you always fear the worst. What goes through your head is you want to stay calm, because if you panic, everyone else is going to panic. You remain calm and remember what you have to do.”

With the help of Lakewood athletic trainer Brent Theriault and Keyport’s First Aid Squad, O’Donnell examined Logan, stabilized him and loaded him onto a spine-board. Thus began a harrowing 24 hours for Logan, a senior linebacker who suffered a fracture dislocation at vertebrae C4-C5 and a disc rupture at C5-C6.

After two surgeries at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, neurosurgeon Dr. Tamir Tawfik delivered the best possible news to Logan’s parents: With the help of physical therapy, he projects to make a full recovery.

“This was a very difficult case, extremely complicated,” Tawfik told the Asbury Park Press. “To end up with the result where he is, he definitely beat the odds. If things weren’t handled the way that they were right from the start, he would have been either paralyzed permanently or even dead.”

Tawfik, O’Donnell and the Blanks family agreed to tell this story because they want to raise awareness about spinal-cord injuries and shine a light on the crucial actions that made all the difference.

“I’d like to say this was a miracle,” Donnie Blanks said, “but I think we make our own miracles.”

The response on the field

Logan Blanks was injured while making a tackle – by all accounts, it was a routine play executed in routine fashion. O’Donnell’s response was purposeful from the start.

“Kelly approached him from the top of his head,” Donnie Blanks said. “If she’d approached him face-to-face, maybe he would have picked his head up, but when she approached from the top all he could do was look his eyes back.”

First, there were questions: What happened? How do you feel?

“He said he felt a shock go down his back, and his arms dropped,” Donnie Blanks said. “When we got out on the field he was moving his legs. I didn’t think he was paralyzed at that point. But the look on his face – my sons are all pretty tough kids, they’ve had other injuries – I saw a little fear in his eyes. As she went through her conversation with him, she was identifying what was going on.”

It took just a couple of words for O’Donnell to realize what they were dealing with.

“As soon as you hear, ‘my neck,’ you try to eliminate the worst possible scenarios and work your way backward: Does he have feeling in his extremities? Does he have grip strength? Wiggling his toes?” she explained. “Our (athletic director) made sure we have EMS (emergency medical services) on site at every home game. As soon as I was on the scene, I radioed for the spine board. It took (Keyport First Aid) less than five minutes after my evaluation to get out on the field and do what they needed to do.”

Once Logan was stabilized, Lakewood’s Theriault removed his facemask – saving the hospital staff from having to spend precious moments sawing it off later. O’Donnell had helped spine-board an injured player before, but this was her first time in the lead role. A big part of the task was bedside manner – keeping Logan calm, keeping everyone calm really.

“Watching Kelly interact with Logan and how calm she was, it made me calm,” Keyport Superintendent Lisa Savoia said.

“The great thing about working with high school athletes in a close-knit community is I get to see the kids every day,” O’Donnell said. “I know them on a personal level. I have a rapport with them. They feel they can trust me.”

So when she told Logan to “just focus on your breathing,” he did.

More:Keyport community comes together in support of Logan Blanks

Being surrounded by like-minded professionals helped. There’s a lot of camaraderie within the athletic training community, and O’Donnell said Theriault’s assistance was invaluable. And Keyport First Aid is widely respected throughout the Bayshore as a leader in the field.

Assessing, stabilizing and transporting Logan Blanks took teamwork, including assistance from parents Donnie and Kathy.

“I like to say that it’s my job and what I am trained to do,” O’Donnell said. “But I am grateful (Donnie) was able to trust me and helped us when it came to moving and transporting Logan onto the spine board.”

O’Donnell had to remain at the field after Logan was transported to the hospital. The game resumed, and Keyport won. It would be a nerve-wracking wait for news on his condition.

“If we sat him up or moved him in any way, he would have been finished,” Donnie Blanks said. “This is why I shout out Kelly with so many accolades. She kept everybody calm and everybody followed her direction. She was spot-on. The way Logan was handled early in the process helped make the outcome what it was.”

At the hospital, two surgeries

Initially, Logan was transported to Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank. After an examination there, and the removal of his uniform, he was airlifted to Jersey Shore. That’s where Dr. Tawfik first encountered him. Born and raised in Randolph, Tawfik’s practice (Uprite Medical) is in Totowa, Passaic County, but he was on call that weekend.

When Tawfik first examined him, Logan was weak in his left arm and felt some numbness and tingling in his back.

“He would have been paralyzed from the shoulders down if he had any worsening of his condition,” Tawfik said. “Stabilizing his neck was of the utmost importance initially.”

The surgeon was effusive in his praise for the chain of first responders who delivered Logan to his care.

“I am one small piece of the puzzle,” Tawfik said. “We have to give credit to the people who attended to him on the field, the ER staff and trauma staff, pediatric ICU, nurses, other physicians who examined him, all the staff in the operating room. Because for them to get that patient from the field and into my hands, there’s a lot of steps and a lot of people contributing to that process. Every person played a huge, integral role in this.”

Tawfik’s first task?

“I had to try to realign his spine,” he said. “We initially thought he was going to require a one-level (realignment) from the front and possibly some stabilization from the back. But I noticed the level below was also affected. That’s when I stepped out of the room and said, ‘This is more complicated than I initially thought. Not only does he have a fracture at C4-C5, but he also had a disc rupture at C5-C6.’”

So one surgery became two, with the second surgery taking place early the following day.

“I needed to stabilize his spine and also decompress his spinal cord and his nerve roots,” Tawfik said.

After the second surgery, Tawfik delivered good news to Donnie and Kathy Blanks.

“He’s going to make an excellent recovery given all the circumstances,” Tawfik said.

Donnie Blanks said his family is beyond grateful for Tawfik’s work and that of everyone who attended to their son along the way.

“We can’t fix the spinal cord and we can’t fix the nerves – it’s up to the body to do so,” Tawfik explained to the Press. “But we set up his spinal column and spinal cord in the best possible situation. Hopefully with physical therapy he’ll be able to make a complete recovery.”

'You can't say enough'

Logan is undergoing physical therapy Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. Though there is no timetable for his release, he’s improving each day.

The Keyport football team – of which his younger brother, Roman Blanks, is the quarterback – takes a 6-2 record into the NJSIAA playoffs. The Red Raiders open Friday at Glassboro. They’ve won four straight, including a 13-6 victory over neighboring rival Keansburg the week after Logan was hurt. Afterward the players brought the series trophy, the "Bayshore Bell," to Logan in New Brunswick.

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe campaign, titled #4Logan has raised $27,000 so far to help the Blanks family with medical costs associated with Logan’s recovery.

“You can’t say enough (about the community response),” Donnie Blanks said. “A lot of times when something tragic happens a community comes together, but our community is actually always like that.”

One of the things Donnie hopes others glean from his son's story is the importance of having qualified medical personnel, including transport, at all high school football games.

O’Donnell, too, has a message for the next athletic trainer who sees an athlete go down with a serious injury.

“The most important thing I want to share is, trust your gut,” she said. “We went to school for this, we know what we’re supposed to do in that moment. I know how overwhelmingly stressful it can be, but we know what to do.”

To contribute to the fundraiser for Logan Blanks and his family, search #4Logan at www.GoFundMe.com.

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Keyport football's Logan Blanks recovery started with athletic trainer