Category: Sports

Back on Track: After 2 years of setbacks, Atkins has returned to Olympics

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a three-part series previewing Dickinson State alumni who are competing for the Bahamas at the Summer Olympics in London.

There was a point, almost five years ago, when Derrick Atkins was sixth-hundredths of a second from being on top of the sprinting world. Somewhere along the line, though, he went missing in action.

Now, after four very quiet years, the Dickinson State graduate and Bahamas record holder in the 100 meters is back among the elite of a world he almost ruled.

His next stop is Olympic Stadium in London.

“A year or so ago, he was probably questioning whether or not he was going to be back,” DSU head track and field coach Pete Stanton said.

After failing to make the finals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Atkins stepped back from the limelight that found him after he won a silver medal at the 2007 World Championships. He raced a bit in 2009, clocking times far below what he was accustomed to.

Then, sometime in the middle of the 2010 season, Atkins disappeared from the international track scene altogether. He didn’t attend any major meets and sat out the entire 2011 season.

So what happened? Nagging knee injuries, Atkins said, were at the source of most of his problems.

“It took a while for me to get going again,” Atkins said. “It cost me the whole season.”

Now that he’s healthy again, Atkins has rediscovered the spark that nearly made him a world champion.

He punched his ticket to the Olympics with a 10.09-second run at a meet in Clermont, Fla., on June 9 and by winning the Bahamas national championship on June 22.

The 28-year-old returns to the games when the 100-meter heats begin Saturday, Aug. 4. “Basically, the focus was just trying to get back to competing and being competitive,” Atkins said.

Ramon Miller, a DSU alumnus who will race for the Bahamas in the 400 meters and 1,600 relay at London, was Atkins’ roommate during the Beijing games.

He said it’s inspiring to watch Atkins pick himself up when he could have easily hung up his cleats.

“This is a sport where injuries come,” Miller said. “Sometimes they knock you to the ground. It’s just how you pick up yourself. Everything takes time, but it heals up.”

Atkins said competition has always been his driving force.

It helped him claim seven NAIA national championships during his time at DSU and pushed him to new heights in 2007, the best year of his career.

Atkins’ career-best time in the 100 meters is 9.91 seconds, which came in the finals of the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan.

American Tyson Gay passed Jamaican and former worldrecord holder Asafa Powell with roughly 30 meters remaining. As Powell slowed down, it allowed Atkins — who had been climbing toward the top of the sprinting world that entire summer — to move into second place and secure the silver medal.

Since then, Atkins’ career has been inconsistent to say the least.

He went to the Beijing Olympics the next summer with a season-best time of 10.02 seconds but could only muster a 10.13 to finish sixth in his semifinal heat.

While it has taken him four years, Atkins is finally back where he was before Beijing.

“It says a lot about his character,” said Trevor Barry, Atkins’ DSU teammate and an Olympic high jumper for the Bahamas. “If you want something, and have the determination and drive, you’ve just got to put in the work and effort.”

Though Atkins is treating these Olympics like they’ll be his last, he’s hoping they aren’t. With new focus on his health and training, Atkins is confident he can continue competing long enough to make a push for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

“Trying to stay healthy is the big thing,” Atkins said. “That’s half the battle right there.”

Chance for gold: 3 former DSU stars chasing Olympic glory for native Bahamas (Part 1)

What are the chances?

What are the chances three men raised on the small Caribbean island of the Bahamas would decide their best option for college athletics was at a small NAIA university in Dickinson?

What are the chances those men would become three of the best athletes to ever walk the halls of Dickinson State University?

What are the chances all three would find great success on the international track and field stage?

Over the next two weeks, DSU will have three alumni — Derrick Atkins, Trevor Barry and Ramon Miller — competing at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

“It’s quite a distinction,” Barry said. “It’s quite a feat in itself, to have three athletes from such a small school to be in the Olympics.”

Atkins runs in the 100 meters and Miller in the 400 meters beginning Saturday, Aug. 4. Barry’s Olympics begin with the high jump qualifying on Sunday, Aug. 5. Miller is also a member of the Bahamas 1,600 relay team that starts Thursday, Aug. 9.

Blue Hawks head track and field coach Pete Stanton said having three former athletes — who combined for 27 individual NAIA national titles and helped DSU win national championships in 2004, 2005 and 2006 — competing at the Olympics is a massive accomplishment for any school, let alone one of DSU’s size.

“It’s a pretty incredible achievement for those three guys to be former members of our team and now all three are competitive at the world level,” Stanton said. “It’s not just a thing that they’re there, but all three are in a situation where they have a chance to be in the finals and be very competitive at a world level.”

Atkins, 28, was at his peak in 2007 when he won a silver medal in the 100 meters at the World Championships. He went to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing but lost out in the semifinals.

After a couple of years beset by injuries, he made his Olympic return by running a qualifying time of 10.09 seconds June 9 in Clermont, Fla.

Barry, 29, won a bronze medal in the high jump at the 2011 World Championships with a leap of 7 feet, 7¼ inches (2.32 meters) and ranks among the best in the world in his event. He’s making his first Olympic trip after falling short of qualifying for Beijing by 1 centimeter.

Miller, 25, is back at the Olympics after leaving Beijing with a silver medal. He competed in the semifinals for the Bahamas 1,600 relay team that went on to place second in the finals. This year’s Bahamas mile relay team, on which Miller is a featured member, is ranked in the top five of the world standings.

Miller actually qualified in three events, but chose not to compete in the 200 meters.

Nonetheless, he will become the first DSU alumnus of the four who have been to the Olympics — Aaron Cleare was on the Bahamas mile relay team at the 2004 Athens Olympics — to compete in two different events.

Like many Olympians, the men haven’t been without their trials and tribulations.

Atkins and Miller fought off injuries and subpar years before bouncing back to reach London. Barry, meanwhile, has made a steady climb toward becoming one of the world’s best high jumpers.

The trio has even provided a point of pride for DSU, which could use some after a school year marred by the firing of President Richard McCallum following a devastating audit that found hundreds of international students received bogus degrees. There were also violations against the volleyball team for improper payments to students.

The school’s pride in their Olympians has been expressed through the “Team DSU” promotional campaign this summer and DSU President D.C. Coston said the trio, who are all graduates, are shining examples of what it means to be a successful student-athlete.

“We’re very excited that three Dickinson State alumni will be competing in the Olympics, that along with the great things that other graduates have done, it’s great to see that Dickinson State is also a place where athletic success can accompany academic success,” Coston said.

Miller said he is glad to have defied critics who questioned why he chose DSU — a place where some believe the weather is too cold to groom world-class track athletes, he said — and now points to himself, and his Bahamian Olympic teammates as examples of how an athlete can find success, even out of somewhere as small as DSU.

“It shows that if anybody goes there, they can do the same thing,” Miller said.

Miller, Atkins and Barry have proven there’s always a chance.

Battling Bulls Again: Halliday’s bull rider returns to NHSFR a year wreck left him in 4-day coma

Camren DeCoteau remembers almost everything leading up to the moment that put him in a coma.

On July 20, 2011, DeCoteau did what he had done countless times before.

The reigning North Dakota state high school bull riding champion stepped into a chute and calmly set himself atop the bull. He gave a head nod, watched the chute gate open and held on tight.

This time, however, he never heard the eight-second time limit buzzer.

“I just remember hitting the (bull’s) horn. Then I was gone,” DeCoteau said. “I hit the horn and that hit the lights on me.

“They said if I wasn’t wearing a helmet, I would have been dead.”

DeCoteau, a 2012 Halliday High School graduate, returns to the National High School Finals Rodeo this week, almost a year after the near-fatal accident that put him in a four-day medically induced coma but did not shake his spirit. to hold her breath for eight seconds every time her son gets on a bull. All she hopes is that he doesn’t have a repeat of what happened last year.

“It’s a long eight seconds, that’s for sure,” Fredericks said.

The night he was injured, Fredericks said DeCoteau and his bull were not in sync. As the animal attempted to buck him off, its head swung up and back, connecting with DeCoteau’s head. Once DeCoteau was bucked and in the dirt, the bull trampled him for a moment before being chased from the arena.

The NHSFR begins today at the Sweetwater Athletic Complex in Rock Springs, Wyo. DeCoteau is scheduled to ride in the Tuesday evening and Thursday morning performances.

Lori Fredericks, DeCoteau’s mother, said she fully intends

DeCoteau suffered skull fractures in 10 places and shearing of blood vessels near his brain, causing bleeding. Fredericks said doctors told her the vessels were sheared by whiplash and the blunt-force trauma of her son’s head connecting with the bull’s head and horn at a high rate of speed.

“The very first night, we didn’t know what was going to happen, if there was any brain damage, how much brain damage there was, or if he was even going to come out of it,” Fredericks said. “The first night was the scariest. After that, it got a little bit better.”

To make matters worse, DeCoteau had suffered a slight concussion after being bucked earlier in the day while competing in the morning performance.

“It dazed me pretty good,” he said, adding he never lost consciousness. “My parents wanted me to go to the hospital, but I said I was alright. I decided to get back on that night.”

DeCoteau said he doesn’t regret the decision to return for the evening performance despite being urged not to, adding he would make the same choice if he had to do it all over again.

“It’s kind of the way I was brought up,” he said. “Dad always told me if you get hurt and don’t feel like riding, don’t get on. If you feel like you’re capable of doing it, then go for it.”

By July 23, Fredericks said her son began to regain consciousness. His condition improved greatly over the next two days and he returned home July 25 after five days in the hospital.

Weston Hartman, a 16-year-old from Mandan who rides bareback broncs and bulls, is good friends with DeCoteau and watched his ill-fated ride at the NHSFR last year. He said seeing his friend lay unconscious at Campbell County Memorial Hospital in Gillette, Wyo., was scarier than the ride that put him there.

“You didn’t expect him to be in there that long,” Hartman said. “You just expect him to have a concussion and he had a lot more injuries than that.”

DeCoteau said he remembers nothing from his time in the hospital, saying the last thing he remembers from the rodeo was his final ride.

“I remember waking up at home. I don’t even remember the drive home,” DeCoteau said. “I woke up at home and kind of forgot all about nationals and my mom said, ‘You’re not riding anymore.’”

DeCoteau, about has hard-headed as the bull that knocked him out, didn’t take those words to heart.

A little over a month later, he was on the back of a bull at an amateur rodeo in Fort Totten.

“I’m not going to lie, I was pretty scared,” he said with a laugh.

He hung on for just under eight seconds before being thrown to the dirt.

“I just kind of stood there for a second. I didn’t even run,” DeCoteau said. “I walked away from him as he was chasing me all the way back. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve done.”

Neurologists cleared DeCoteau to ride bulls at North Dakota High School Rodeo Association events just in time for the spring high school season that begin at the end of April. He spent the fall team roping, an event he had never tried until then.

“That was something new for us, for the whole family,” Fredericks said with a laugh. “Usually we just throw the gear bag in the trunk and we’re off to the rodeo. Now we had to get the horse and the trailer. You learn all new things.”

DeCoteau got his only win of the year — a 73-point ride — at the spring opener in West Fargo on April 28. He logged a 70-point ride the following day.

DeCoteau said he is coming into this year’s NHSFR with a completely different outlook. Last year, DeCoteau felt he wasn’t riding his best leading up to nationals, which he said contributed to what happened the day he was injured.

“I got to thinking too much that I won state and that it’d be easy to go down there and win nationals,” he said.

This year, he has spent the summer riding bulls and has shrugged off a subpar performance at this year’s state high school finals that led him to finish third in the state standings behind champion Devin Boltz of Belfield and runner-up Coleman Entze of Dunn Center.

DeCoteau ranks second in the Western Edge Bull Riding standings with $1,500 earned over four rodeos and won $2,272 for a winning 76-point ride at the Wing Rodeo in June.

“I’ve been getting on anything that’s able to get on,” he said.

But there are always worries, Fredericks said.

“Even months after it happened, we still don’t know the long-term effects of a severe head injury,” Fredericks said.

Nonetheless, there’s little she can do to hold her son back.

“I think he’s more confident,” Fredericks said. “This is what he loves to do and he’s doing it.”

Chris Carlson, one of Dickinson area’s greatest athletes, dies at age 41

Chris Carlson simultaneously led a blessed and troubled life.

Carlson, an adoring father to two young daughters and a man best known in Dickinson for his athletic accomplishments, died tragically of an apparent suicide in his home Sunday, family and friends said Monday.

“We all knew he struggled with issues and things of that nature,” said Kyle Carlson, his younger brother. “He tried his hardest to work through it.”

The son of longtime Dickinson High School track and field coach Jack Carlson, Chris Carlson was described by many as one of the best athletes Dickinson has ever produced.

Among his many athletic accomplishments, Chris Carlson was named the North Dakota Associated Press Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association’s Male Athlete of the Year in 1989, the year he graduated from DHS.

An all-state quarterback and a standout pole vaulter who helped the Midgets track team his father coached to the 1989 state championship, Chris Carlson was also a standout on the basketball court and the baseball field.

Continue reading “Chris Carlson, one of Dickinson area’s greatest athletes, dies at age 41”

Concussions have forced talented DSU athlete Trevor Willis to give up football

Trevor Willis was about to be ripped into by Dickinson State head football coach Hank Biesiot.

The sophomore safety had missed a potential tackle and been, as he put it, “earholed,” by an opposing player.

As Willis wandered to the sideline, Biesiot began his tirade. But the veteran coach quickly stopped himself.

“Tim!” Biesiot hollered, calling for the team’s head athletic trainer, Tim Kreidt.

“He knew something was wrong,” Willis said.

One look into Willis’ eyes told Biesiot and Kreidt everything they needed to know.

Willis was exhibiting all the signs of a concussion — his second in a month and the last he will ever experience on a football field.

He now knows he probably shouldn’t have been on the field that day. But it’s a lesson he and many other athletes who have experienced head trauma found out too late: Concussions aren’t just dizzying blows to the head. They are life-changing injuries.

Knockout blows

Seven months after his first concussion, the 22-year-old Columbus, Mont., native said he feels good. He exercises daily and keeps busy with his dual major in business and accounting.

But his football days are over and his track and field career is in limbo.

Willis said two physicians and a chiropractor agree that the two concussions he suffered last fall have made playing football unsafe.

An NAIA national championships qualifier in the decathlon, Willis is taking a medical redshirt this spring because his second concussion kept him from training for nearly three months.

“Looking back, one thing I would have changed through the whole thing — you can’t regret it, concussions are part of football, part of the game, it happens — but when I went back in that game against Jamestown, had I known what I know now, there’s no way I would have went back in because that definitely did not help,” Willis said.

His first concussion came on a banner homecoming afternoon for the Blue Hawks. On Sept. 25, DSU beat rival Jamestown College 26-16 and, in doing so, picked up the football program’s 400th win.

Willis wasn’t doing much celebrating though.

In the second quarter, he and teammate Jason Kraft — a hard-hitting senior linebacker — were converging a Jamestown receiver when that player slid to the ground to avoid the impending hard tackle. Without time to stop, Kraft inadvertently hit Willis helmet-to-helmet.

The hit dazed Willis, but he wasn’t worried about a concussion.

“At the time, I was more worried about my neck,” Willis said.

He went back in the game and kept playing, but said he didn’t feel right when he went back to the sideline. He felt dizzy when he left the field before halftime.

Willis tried practicing the next week, but almost immediately became dizzy when he exerted himself.

A mild concussion was the diagnosis.

Three weeks later, Willis was cleared to play following a CT Scan. He sat out the next game — the Blue Hawks’ home loss against Black Hills State — as a precaution, but came back for DSU’s crucial game at South Dakota Mines on Oct. 23 in Rapid City, S.D.

“I didn’t really feel anything during the whole game,” Willis said. “I was definitely more tentative than I was before. I wasn’t playing the way I was before I had the first concussion.”

Willis had almost made it through the entire game without incident when he took the hit that ended his career.

On DSU’s final punt in the fourth quarter, Willis was pursuing the return man when he took a shot in the helmet.

“The kid who had the ball ran right by me,” Willis said. “I didn’t know where I was and Luke Leno pulled me off the field (after the play).

“After that game, I didn’t feel well at all.”

Tricky diagnosis

Diagnosing a concussion is tricky business, says Kreidt. In his 11th year as DSU’s head athletic trainer, Kreidt said he has seen several injuries that could be described as concussions. Few, however, are immediately recognizable — or reported.

“If you’re watching the game really closely, you’ll see somebody get hit and he’ll be stunned for a second, walk to the huddle and be able to shake it off by the time the next play comes around and just continue playing,” Kreidt said. “That’s the tough situation, too, is the kids have to report them.”

Willis said he knew very little about how concussion symptoms could vary from person to person until he was diagnosed with his first.

“Even then, I thought it was going to be something where I got a headache for a day or two and I was fine,” he said. “I tried to come back to practice and Tim told me, ‘Different people react differently, you never know how long this is going to take.’ I came back that first practice and realized, OK, this is going to take longer that I thought.”

The second concussion had a far different affect on Willis and his brain function.

In the following days, Willis said he felt best when he was alone at home and lying in bed. Going to class was a chore. He had trouble reading, even thinking.

“For the first four days, I just laid there in bed and tried not to think,” Willis said. “When I tried to think, my head felt like my brain was on fire.”

Kreidt said numerous studies on concussions have shown that less activity after a concussion helps a person’s brain heal faster.

“If you really want to truly recover from a concussion, you’re just going to have to just shut down completely,” Kreidt said. “That’s the tough part with these college athletes. They still have to go to classes where they’re mentally working the mind. That’s a tough part, too, is for them to completely shut down and let the brain recover.”

DSU is in the infant stages of preparing to test its student-athletes who could potentially suffer a concussion.

Next school year, Kreidt said instructors and trainers in the athletic and physical education departments hope to conduct baseline tests on Blue Hawk athletes using the King-Devick Test.

Dr. Alan King of Dickinson and Dr. Steve Devick of Chicago developed the King-Devick Test 35 years ago as a way to determine reading disabilities in children for their optometry school thesis. Recent studies by University of Pennsylvania researchers have determined that another version of the test can be used to determine if an athlete has suffered a concussion.

The test takes about two minutes and can be performed on the sidelines during games. It is accurate to the 95th percentile in diagnosing concussions.

Kreidt said the King-Devick Test is another step forward in helping medical professionals treat athletes who have suffered head trauma.

“We’ve got to find better ways to find concussions,” Kreidt said. “They’re happening out there and we don’t even know it.”

Willis hopes to be a part of the tests when he returns to school next year. He wants to get back to the national track and field meet next season.

While Willis won’t be on the football field next fall, Kreidt said his story will serve as an example of how serious athletes should take concussions.

But that hasn’t stopped Willis from wishing he could be out on the field. He’s already beginning to think about what his life will be like without football.

“When I think about it, it’s going to be pretty tough,” Willis said.