At first, the impact felt like every other.

Junior Juan Moreira’s head recoiled as he crashed into senior Elian Gaona’s shoulder pad and spun to the ground, causing him to black out. Moreira’s vision returned confined through his visor, staring down to the black turf pellets inches below his face. 

“It’s a normal hit; get up, big boy,” Moreira said.

Over and over he tried to push his body up, but nothing moved.

“Why can’t I get up, what’s going on?”

Within an hour, ambulance sirens filled the parking lot. That day, both his spinal disc and his future in football fractured.

“I’ve felt so weird these last few days,” Moreira said. “I didn’t like the sport at first but I literally can’t go without it now. I love watching football. I love playing it. I love talking football. I’ve been playing for so long.”

“Football is my life.” 

Early life

Moreira quit sports following the COVID-19 pandemic even though he grew up playing. Moreira continued to watch his older brother play football though.

“Just watching (my brother’s) joy when his team scores a touchdown, or the joy they had when making a tackle and the whole team’s energy and celebration, it gave me a spark,” Moreira said.

Moreira joined the Moorhead Junior High football B team in seventh grade. However, his relationship with football started off rocky; being a second string player with a single win that season. He didn’t play that game.

Moreira was promoted to a starting running back position in the off-season.

“I worked my butt off every day,” Moreira said. “And I felt so proud of myself because I have always been, unathletic, slow, and when I started working hard, I saw changes. You know feeling so proud, it makes you want to keep going. So ever since then I kept going.”

The scrimmage

Moreira expected to miss practice Aug. 16 helping with his family’s concrete business but convinced his dad to let him go, seeing this as a chance to show his leadership as a starting center.

“If I don’t show up to practice when I’m tired, how do I expect the other people to show up when they’re tired?” Moreira said. “My little cousin was there. I took him there; how would he feel?”

Moreira woke up late, skipped breakfast and drove to pick up his younger cousin, freshman Eddie Carballo and their friend, sophomore Amarian Hughes.

Carballo gave Moreira his coconut water for some fuel before the 93 degree practice. Under the heat, humidity and six pound football pads the coconut water did not last long – multiple kids vomited from exhaustion. 

“I’m a bigger guy, so I need something in my body to play good,” Moreira said. “I just sweat a lot, and then I feel dizzy; that’s what happened. I told the trainers to give me some electrolytes, and I sat behind the bench to cool off a little bit and then we went to the scrimmage.”

Moreira worked lineman drills for roughly two hours before the team broke into offense vs. defense scrimmage. Only two plays into the scrimmage, Moreira also broke.

Defense ran an aggressive screen route. Responding to the play late, Moreira launched an exhaustion-induced head first block into Gaona’s shoulder. The clash was light enough senior Elian Gaona was oblivious.

“I was really worried. At the moment I was like ‘what that was? Like, what’s going on?’,” Gaona said. “A lot of things were going through my mind. ‘Did he have a heat struggle? Did he pass out?’ It was really nerve wracking, you don’t want your brother injured.”

Moreira’s spine compressed on impact, fracturing a disc and temporarily paralysing him. Moreira laid limp for five minutes until senior Jhoranny Cornejo alerted trainers.

“I just backed away to let the trainers do their jobs and just hoped that he would be okay,” Cornejo said. “I prayed that he didn’t have any life altering effects from the injury. All I could do was pray he was alright and go around comforting my teams that were distraught with what happened.”

Carballo sobbed; senior Ricardo Pulido led the team in prayer; athletic trainer coach Chad Miller yelled for Moreira to stay on the ground as they unscrewed his helmet’s visor. 

Diagnosis

EMS arrived at the field roughly 40 minutes later, strapped Moreira to a gurney and transported him to The Woodlands Texas Childrens Hospital. 

At the hospital, nurses ripped open Moreira’s jersey, carefully slid their hands into his helmet, removing it and placing him in a gown for the next four hours of CT scans. Doctors relocated Moreira Texas Children’s in Houston for specialist review. 

In between the scans and transfers, Moreira turned to God for guidance.

“I knew that I was in good hands with the Lord,” Moreira said. “I knew that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me; I was just waiting to go home. When you have somebody like God in your life, you could get shot; you wouldn’t be scared. He knows why he’s doing that.”

Doctors discharged Moreira in a neck brace at 4 a.m. Leaving the hospital was the first time Moreira stood up independently since the injury. 

To Moreira’s surprise, he received over 100 notifications from the community posting their worries; he was glad they weren’t in his memory. Moreira said this injury permanently changed his perspective on life.

“One mistake cost you a lot,” Moreira said. “You could have a perfect game but if somebody else trips and you land on them and you break something. I can’t be mad at God for making this happen, while other people are disabled for life though. I would really say this is just like a little bump on the road.”

Re-discovering Moreira

Moreira returned to school Aug. 19 with a void football once filled; a void he hides coaching his replacement center, sophomore Ryan Leblanc.

“I didn’t really have a backup but he stepped up because he was a guard,” Moreira said. “Since then, every practice, I’ll watch and just correct him. But deep down, I want to play. On Friday night, (after the game) I went home and I started crying a little bit because I wasn’t ready to actually stop playing.”

Over the past two weeks of recovery, Moreira’s football memories flashed on repeat. Sitting along the sidelines lost in those memories, realization struck: he had to capture these moments.

Strapped with Canon Rebel T7 borrowed from his youth pastor, Moreira took the field again Aug. 22 at the Northbrook away game, this time with a drive to capture memories.

“When I get a good picture, I’m like ‘Yes, I know they’re going to be happy,’” Moreira said. “So I enjoy photography because I like just making the players happy by taking the pictures I wish they got of me. I would love it when people got pictures of me.”

Moreira took over 800 photos during the away game and posted the best on his Instagram. Moreira acknowledged leaving football opened the door to a media career but he’s confident football is his true passion.

“I don’t know when, but I know I will come back because the Lord and Savior is gonna let me come back sooner than expected,” Moreira said. “Mark my words. I’ll come back sooner than expected. I’m not supposed to play this season, but I know I will, because my faith and will is stronger than anybody else here.”