Purdue sophomore Colmery's goal: Return to football

Will Colmery’s right hand moves to his forehead and, slowly, he pulls his shaggy dark locks back.

Only then do you see the scar.

It’s still pink, spanning across the entirety of the scalp, as wide as eye to eye.

It’s the only physical sign anything happened to the 21-year-old defensive lineman. Colmery looks good — even with the cookies folks have been bringing him to show they care and are pulling for him.

But, still, he’d like to be able to start working out again soon with his Purdue teammates. He hasn’t done that for more than a month.

Not since the blackouts started happening more frequently.

They ultimately were the warning sign: Colmery had a mass near his brain. One that, once discovered, would require emergency surgery. One that, once removed, would leave him with that scar. One that, once tested, would prove to be benign.

Now, though?

“I feel fine. I’m doing really good,” Colmery said Sunday at Purdue’s media day, the first time speaking with media since last year. “I’m really happy to be back at Purdue with all my friends, my teammates, my coaches. It really is really nice to be back.”

The first time Colmery can recall having an episode was during the conditioning test last year. He didn’t lose consciousness — he never did when he had what he calls blackouts — but he started walking, rather than running. Many figured it was because of the heat — maybe he was dehydrated? — but he had medical tests done anyway, including on his heart. But nothing showed up.

So he went back to his normal workouts, and he was fine for awhile. Nothing happened again until this spring. With the reoccurrence, Colmery started getting worried. So he had another round of tests. Still nothing.

Then, in June, he had three consecutive days with episodes, including one in which he was with family at an event in Kansas City. He was with his brothers, and it freaked them out. A disoriented Colmery couldn’t remember what he’d said or done over the several minutes he was out of it, but people would tell him he’d been rambling.

Colmery immediately told Purdue’s staff after that incident, and he was pulled from workouts. The next week, he was in the weight room, just watching, when he had a seizure.

“I don’t remember anything,” Colmery said about the incident.

He woke up 12 hours later, in the hospital, and was told by the surgeon that a mass ruptured near his brain — it was between the skull and the brain, Colmery said. It had caused the seizure and had been causing the blackouts. Colmery was told he needed emergency surgery.

“(The surgeon) thought it was non-cancerous, but he wasn’t for sure. So I was pretty scared about that, that there was a possibility,” said Colmery, whose family rushed to West Lafayette from the Chicago area to be with him in the hospital. “But I tend to see things in a good light, and I always hope for the best and expect the best. It worked out great for a bad situation.

“I’m definitely extremely thankful. If (the seizure) would have happened 30 minutes earlier, I drove my moped there. If it would have happened on that, that could have been really bad. If I was at home alone … I don’t know. There’s a lot of what-ifs? But I’m thankful for the way it happened. I feel better off now that it’s gone because when those occurrences were happening, I was really scared. It was one of those things where I didn’t want to find out (what was wrong). But I knew I was eventually going to find out whatever it was.”

Now, Colmery’s waiting to find out when he can return to real activities with his teammates.

He reported to training camp like everyone else, checking in at Cary Quad on Wednesday, and showed up to the first practice on Thursday. He spent the first three days of practice shadowing his defensive line group and afterward working with the graduate assistants on "computer stuff."

“Just to see him sitting in our team meeting room, with a smile on his face and being a part of this family, this team here, I’m happy for him and us,” Coach Darrell Hazell said.

For now, that role is enough for Colmery. He's just happy to be around his teammates again.

"When you get taken away from that, from all your friends for awhile, it just kind of sucks," he said.

Colmery has another check-up with the doctor this week — all the previous ones since the late-June surgery have gone well, he said — and he’s hoping to be cleared soon to resume working out. He’s not sure if he’ll be able to return to practice or if football will be part of his future, but he hopes it is.

“It’s my goal to come back,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s not my decision. It’s going to be a situation where I’m working to come back and whatever they say at the end, whenever that day is, that’ll be it.”

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