KEN LANE / Staff

Palmetto Ridge defensive lineman Elbrinet Dupras fends off East Lee'­s Sam St. Louis, as the two teams met in a district battle, Nov. 2 at Palmetto Ridge. The Bears won 48-0.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More All

• It’s Christmastime at Palm Cottage
• Great Depression unlike today’s troubling times
• You Review Movie: John Augustine

Share and Enjoy [?]

NAPLES — It’s 3 p.m. on Friday, and the afternoon bell rang an hour ago at Palmetto Ridge High School.

Elbrinet Dupras is walking the wrong direction — back to school.

His iPod in hand, with a white workout T-shirt and black Palmetto Ridge football shorts, Dupras half-jogs, half-walks around the back of the school to the practice field. It seems that almost any minute head coach Tim Speakman could look over, see Dupras, and shout at him to hurry up.

Bears football players aren’t supposed to walk.

Dupras still wants to be a part of the team, even though in many ways he can’t be.

Nearly four months ago, on May 9, Dupras was on this same football field when he collapsed at a spring practice and had to be airlifted to Tampa General Hospital.

He spent the next few days unconscious or barely awake. Doctors studied his brain, ran tests, hooked him up to IVs, trying to make sure Dupras wasn’t the latest Floridian football player to die after collapsing on the field.

Dupras’ cousin, former Lely star Ereck Plancher, had already died on March 18 after collapsing at a spring workout at the University of Central Florida.

But Dupras pulled through. Doctors said his collapse was due to a subdural hematoma, a blood clot in the brain, that was not necessarily due to football. A predisposition to sickle cell trait, which was found to be the cause of Plancher’s death, also may have contributed to Dupras’ collapse.

Today, he says he doesn’t remember much about the day when his life changed forever. He doesn’t even remember scoring the touchdown that preceded his collapse — Dupras had to ask teammate Jimmy Perry how many yards it was.

That was the last touchdown Dupras would ever score as a Bear. His high school football career ended that spring day. After the collapse, doctors told him: “No more contact sports.”

“I was sad because I really liked football,” Dupras said on Friday. “I ain’t gonna lie, I do miss it.”

Despite his close call on the gridiron, Dupras just can’t stay away. Football was a big part of the 16-year-old’s life. His family, who emigrated from Haiti, didn’t always share his passion for the sport, but they sure were proud of the son who lifted more than any of his teammates on the power clean just four months ago.

Dupras found his identity and most of his friends often on the football field.

“The biggest thing we miss is that big smile. ... He was always smiling,” Speakman said.

“Of all the people, it had to happen to him,” said Perry, who gives Dupras rides to school.

“Going to practice (after Dupras’ injury) was really weird,” Bears quarterback Mike Hoffman said. “He never really missed a day before.”

It would have been easy for Dupras to completely walk away from the sport. Lose himself in some not-so-constructive extracurricular activities. No one would have blamed him.

Instead, so far, Dupras has been back. The toughest moment may have been Palmetto Ridge’s spring game against LaBelle. Dupras, less than two weeks removed from his stay in the hospital, rode the bus with the team and wore his jersey. For the first time since he was a freshman, though, he didn’t start.

He never left the sideline.

“He just kinda had a vacant stare,” Perry said.

“I know it was hard on him because he told me,” Speakman said. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know how he’ll handle (not playing). It will be tough.”

For Dupras, who still jogged out to the football field to watch practice last Friday, still half-expecting Speakman to shout at him to hurry up, still remembering somewhere inside what it felt like to charge through the offensive line to get to the opposition’s quarterback, it has been tough. But he’s still there.

Everyone says they still want him to be a part of the team. Hoffman says Dupras will get a game jersey every night — no one else can wear No. 58. Perry said the team might organize a tribute with Dupras’ number.

None of that will match the way it felt for Dupras to take the field. He says he might run track this spring, but the passion for the sport won’t be the same for the undersized lineman who proved himself as a starter for one of the area’s biggest schools.

Dupras made an impact on the field for Palmetto Ridge last season. But if he thinks his impact is over now that he can’t play anymore, his teammates say Dupras has changed the way they play forever.

“If it could happen to him, it could happen to anybody,” Hoffman said. “I never want to take a day off anymore.”

“Every day, I just go as hard as I can because of what happened to Elbrinet,” Perry said. “I want to leave it all out there because I know that’s what he would do if he could.”