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  • Madison Central senior Austin Coyle By Nathan Hutchinson

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September 18, 2012

H.S. FOOTBALL: Madison Central’s Coyle survives horrible car wreck, misses just one game

By Nathan Hutchinson Register Sports Editor

RICHMOND — Those few seconds still seem like an eternity to Austin Coyle.

And the memories are still very vivid.

“It was like it was in slow motion,” Coyle said. “I watched the air bag come and hit me in the face. Then I turned to the left and watched the other air bag come out.”

Coming around a blind curve while driving home from football practice, Coyle was forced to swerve off the road to avoid hitting another car. In the blink of an eye, the Madison Central senior was headed out of control up the side of a hill.

Coyle’s vehicle struck a tree, then flipped twice before landing on the driver’s side door.

“I had to crawl out through the sun roof,” Coyle said.

At that point, the Central senior thought he had escaped the incident without any injuries.

But, later that evening he began to feel stomach pains and was taken to Pattie A. Clay. He was later rushed to the University of Kentucky Hospital.

Coyle had suffered a lacerated spleen and a lacerated liver.

“Luckily, the Lord was looking over him and he’s still alive,” Central coach Bert Browne said. “He’s a lucky young man.”

Coyle was held at UK for about 24 hours before being released. His internal injuries weren’t serious enough to require surgery, but they were extensive enough to keep him off the football field.

The original diagnosis was that senior just needed rest and he might miss as much as a month.

“After a week I felt I was a 100 percent and I was ready to go, but they said the risk was so high that I couldn’t play,” Coyle said. “If you are injured it's one thing, you know you are injured. But, when its something like that and you can’t feel it, it kind of makes you feel like you are letting your team down. I just had to play it safe.”

Coyle missed just one game, the season opener against Boone County at Roy Kidd Stadium.

He returned two weeks later when the Indians opened their new athletic facility with an overtime victory over Mercer County.

The senior tight end/linebacker had an impact on the outcome. He finished with five tackles, including one tackle for loss, and had an interception.

He also wasn’t able to haul in a pass from running back Dominique Hawkins in the first half that likely would have gone for a touchdown.

“I ended up getting an interception, so that kind of made up for it a little bit,” Coyle said jokingly.

Coyle says the accident had a profound affect on him and made him re-think some of his priorities.

“It made me really think about how quickly life can be taken,” Coyle said. “You don’t think about those type of things until you are in that type of situation.”

His coach is just happy to know that the senior listened to some of his advice.

“I had him in driver’s education last year,” Browne said. “So, I told him, ‘At least you learned to put your seat belt on.’ He was lucky.”

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