It was a hot, sunny day during the summer of 2005. University of South Alabama cross country runner Nathan Riech – who was 10 years old at the time – was playing golf at the Glen Lakes Golf Course in Glendale, Ariz., with some of his baseball teammates when an unexpected event happened that changed his life forever.
Even at an early age the signs were there for Riech to play and excel in sports. His mother, Ardin, was a two-time national champion in the pole vault and his dad, Todd, was a three-time All-American in the javelin and participant in the 1996 Olympic Games.
Early on it looked as if Riech was on the road to becoming an outstanding baseball player, but on that July afternoon that roadway would end and ultimately lead him to a different path of athletic success.
He had just pitched the game of his life the night before, tossing a one-hitter and striking out 15 batters. Looking for a break from the diamond, he and some of his friends took to the links for a relaxing day of golf.
"That day, my friends and I were trying to get a little breather from baseball because we had a tournament coming up," Riech recalls. "We've always loved golf and we thought it was the most non-contact sport that we could play. The round was great and we were on hole No. 7. We were walking and a group behind us was on a cart and asked if we minded if they played through. We of course obliged them.
"It was 110 degrees outside and we went to stand under a tree about 175 yards down. We didn't think there was any real chance the ball could come near us. Next thing I know, I hear a smack and my head becomes a little fuzzy. My right arm immediately became paralyzed."
While waiting for the group to play through and talking with his friends, Riech was struck in the head by an errant tee shot. After being struck by the golf ball, the golfer who hit the ball drove Nathan back to the clubhouse where he called his mom.
"I called my mom and she thought I was over-exaggerating a little bit at the time because I was a pretty sensitive kid at 10 years old. I used to complain a lot," Riech said. "She thought my arm was just sore from pitching the night before. She came and picked me up and took my friends home and then brought me to the hospital."
Riech and his mom then drove to Phoenix Children's Hospital. Upon arriving there, both he and his mom knew that the injury might be a little more serious than they had first thought.
"Right as we get to the hospital, I think she kind of sensed that there was something wrong because my face became numb," Riech said. "When I got out of the car to run to the emergency room, she noticed I couldn't walk and was dragging my right leg. In the hospital, I started having seizures and I then became unable to talk. I felt like I was talking, but nothing must have been coming out because people weren't talking back to me. When that happened I knew something was going on."
While the x-rays and scans showed no skull fracture, doctors did notice an area one inch to a half inch deep on the left side of his brain that showed a small hemorrhage about the size of a thumb.
Already suffering seizures, paralysis from head to toe on his whole right side and some cognitive issues, the doctors were concerned that if they attempted surgery to remove the clot that they risked doing more damage to his brain. His family was also concerned about him surviving the injury.
Doctors chose to take a bit of a unique path and let nature attempt to heal the injury. Even if the injury was able to heal itself, the prognosis from the medical staff was not good as they said he would never walk without a limp again, let alone play a sport.
From the outset though, Riech would begin proving both the doctors and science wrong.
"The doctors thought I would be in there for six months, but I was able to leave the hospital in a month," Riech said. "I guess I just reacted to the therapy really well and what they were doing. I think with the positive support of my friends and family around me that that helped in my recovery."
The signs of getting back to a somewhat normal life were evident for Riech from the time his hospital stay was over.
"I walked out of the hospital," Riech said. "Usually with people who go through my type of injury, you only see little jumps, but with me, the doctors were seeing huge jumps. They thought that that was very uncommon and actually wrote about my situation in a medical journal. They felt that the science wasn't proving what they were seeing."
Returning to a "normal" life was important to Riech.
"I got out of the hospital on a Saturday and I was back in school on Monday," Riech stated. "The biggest thing to me was that I wanted to be normal. The doctors told me that I should only do half days, but I told them absolutely not, that I wanted to go full time. After being in the hospital for all the time that I had been the farthest thing from you is feeling normal. I wanted to get back to being as close to normal as possible."
Even after making the huge recovery improvements doctors were still skeptical, but Riech would use that doubt to aide in his recovery.
"When I left the hospital, they told me I would never play a sport again and I took that as a challenge," Riech said. "I love competition and I love a challenge though, so right then I knew that wasn't going to be me. I knew I was going to do everything in my power to prove them wrong. I had a good background and a supportive family and I knew they would help me find a sport I could excel at despite having suffered the injury."
While his parents had known for some time the challenges that Riech, he didn't know the full extent of his injury until he was discharged.
"They told my parents about a week-and-a-half into my hospital stay, but they didn't tell me the doctor's prognosis until we got home," Riech said. "My parents would only tell me that 'You're going to be fine, but it's going to be hard.' When I got out of the hospital, my parents shared a little more about my situation, but used it to show me how far I had come in that short time and how far I could go."
Facing a situation of this magnitude is a huge obstacle for anyone to try to overcome, let alone someone just 10 years of age. However, Riech saw having a severe injury happen at such a young age as a blessing.
"At that age, I didn't know what the word paralyzed meant. I was just mad that I couldn't go play baseball with my friends," Reich stated. "I tried to jump out of bed a couple of times and my parents had to catch me right before I would hit the ground because I didn't know that I wasn't able to do that."
Now out of the hospital, the recovery and physical therapy process to get back to a normal life would be challenging for Riech, even the most basic of skills.
"The whole right side of my body became paralyzed when I was in the hospital and I was right-handed in everything that I did," said Riech. "I had to become left-handed in everything I did. I had to learn to write, tie my shoes and eat with my left hand. Using a fork with my left hand just felt weird.
"At first, I had to learn how to get ready with one hand by myself because I didn't want any help. I wanted to be normal. I had to learn those basic things. Learning to tie my shoe took quite a while. Fortunately I had a good teacher who would tie my shoe for me at school and really worked with me."
Faced with such a difficult rehab, what did the boy with such a competitive background and spirit do? He turned it into a game, not only with the process itself, but also someone very close to him.
"Every time I brought an exercise home to work on, I wanted to learn to do it so well that it would impress my physical therapist," Riech said of his six-year therapy. "I wanted them to say 'Wow! He beat that exercise.' That was my mindset. It kind of became a game to me.
"My mom would sit at the table with me and I would try to do the exercises better than she could. My mom and I have always been really competitive with each other and I feel that really helped me."
While he would recover and regain a normal everyday life, Riech would be forced to give up the sport he loved...baseball. The risk of getting hit by a ball would just be too great. Riech had such a competitive spirit though and it was in his DNA to be active and compete in some type of athletics. He wouldn't have to look far to fill that void.
"I've kind of always been around sports," said Riech. "Baseball was definitely one of the sports that I loved. I picked up track and field after my brain injury because that was really the only non-contact sport I could play. My family had a track background, so I decided to see what it was all about."
Riech adapted to the new sport and quickly became one of the top junior runners in Arizona, finishing fourth at the Junior Olympics prior to the start of his sophomore year. In order to get into the finals of the event, he was going to have to run his fastest time ever. And he did, 12 seconds better than he ever had in his life.
Also after recovering from the injury, Riech saw an opportunity to give back to the organization who had given so much to him, which ended up leading him to a new love.
"I've been a spokesperson for Children's Miracle Network for six years now," Riech said. "Right when I first got the opportunity to be a speaker for them, it was kind of scary to speak in front of so many people when you are a kid. After the first time that I did it, I just became hooked. I absolutely loved it because I saw what Children's Miracle did and I had such a great experience with all of their resources that were at my disposal and I wanted to help them in any way that I could."
One such experience came on November 13, 2009, that would prove to be a bit of an ironic twist for Riech later in life.
"I got the wonderful experience of going to Children's Miracle Network's biggest fundraiser – the Children's Miracle Network Classic held in Orlando, Fla. It's a Pro-Am and I actually got good enough where I could play in it. It was definitely the best weekend of my life."
At the CMN event, Riech was paired in a group with some other professional athletes, among those former Jaguar All-American Heath Slocum.
"It was kind of funny that I played with him and ended up running here," noted Riech.
Riech competed the first two seasons of his collegiate career at Furman University where he was an all-conference runner and as a freshman was part of a team that claimed the 2013 Southern Conference cross country championship for the Paladins.
However, just prior to the start of his junior season, Riech decided he needed a change and transferred to South Alabama. During his first season with the Jaguars, Riech was a key runner on the cross country squad placing second in the first two meets of the fall and a top-75 finish at the Crimson Classic.
At one of the most inopportune times, Riech suffered another setback. While warming up for the Sun Belt Conference Cross Country Championships, he injured his knee and was forced to watch the meet.
"Usually about five hours before a race, you'll go shake out," Riech said. "There was a really slippery surface and I kind of went to make a hard step and I fell on my knee. That was probably almost as hard as being hurt when I was 10 because I was on crutches and sitting on the sideline watching my teammates compete.
"I was just sitting there watching with [cross country head] coach [David] Barnett and couldn't help but think about what we could be doing as a team if I were able to compete."
South Alabama entered the meet as the defending league champions and was one of the favorites, but with Riech unable to compete, the Jaguars would go on to finish third.
"Our team didn't have a great race and I blamed myself for that," Reich said. "That's just how athletes are and just the makeup of us. I'm really looking forward to laying it all on the line this weekend at the championships and hopefully helping our team win."
However, during the recovery process from this injury, Riech drew back on the experience of the situation he went through earlier in his childhood.
"At first, I really wasn't in a good place with us losing conference when we had such high expectations," Riech said. "After I got over that, I realized that I was still going to be able to run and that I would be fine to train again. The injury last fall though helped me remember my roots and realize how fun training was. I had to start from the very beginning again where you are running 10-15 minutes a day where you had been used to running 10 miles a day. It made me work hard and re-instill that process in me."
So far this season, Riech has battled back from the injury, placing 13th at the first home meet of the season and then again finishing in the top 75 at the Crimson Classic on Oct. 15.
Following the conclusion of his collegiate career, he wants to use the sport to continue helping others.
"I would love to be a professional runner so I have that platform where I can help other kids," Riech said. "Those two things combined are my two passions – helping out kids and running. I'm just really appreciative of the opportunities that I've been given."
Riech has already started to use his platform here at South to help children as he helps out at USA's Children's and Women's Hospital serving both as the communications director for their Dance Marathon, which is similar to the Relay for Life event. He also volunteers three hours a week at the hospital where he helps kids who have gone through similar situations to the one he suffered when he was 10.
"It's nice because I can connect with those kids because I know what they are going through," Riech said. "They can relate to me and ask me questions also since I went through a similar experience. Being a college athlete also gives us a little bit of a platform and I try to use it as positively as I possibly can"
When people suffer from an event of the magnitude in which Riech did, people can look at it as a negative or they can let it define them and shape the rest of their life. He certainly chose the latter.
"People will tell me that what I went through was terrible, but to me it was the best experience of my life," Riech said. "I wouldn't be the person I am today had it not been for that injury. I'm happy it happened. The Children's Miracle Network means so much to me and it really did save my life. I don't think I would be anywhere near a track if it wasn't for them."
Riech and the rest of his Jaguar teammates will look to reclaim their Sun Belt title from two years ago when they compete at the league championship meet on Saturday in Dothan, Ala. The championship meet will get underway with women's 5K at 10 a.m. (CT), and will be followed by the men's 8K at 11 a.m. (CT).
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com, and follow the Jaguars at www.twitter.com/USAJaguarSports. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
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