TOPSFIELD — Last fall, T.C. Mannetta, a 6-foot-1-inch 18-year-old, gained nearly 1,000 yards as Masconomet's running back.
Yesterday, Mannetta came home with a flap of skin covering a hole in his skull where his brain is still swollen three weeks after a skateboarding accident. He has four rounds of therapy scheduled every day.
His father eagerly shared advice yesterday drawn from an awful lesson in head injuries.
"He was a great athlete, football player. He was a running back; he knows how to fall," Tom Mannetta said. "You'd think it was a freak thing, but it's pretty common. The doctors and surgeons will tell you these things can be avoided with a helmet."
T.C. Mannetta had a bunch of plans for this spring. The weather would be perfect for skateboarding, which he'd do a few times a week. He was getting ready to leave Masconomet High School for an internship on trendy Newbury Street in Boston, an internship that was supposed to start at the end of this week. He'd been accepted to Champlain College in Vermont, a location that would let him enjoy the outdoors.
Now, his father doesn't know if he'll be graduating Masconomet on time.
"He's going to have a series of tutors and therapies and therapists. We'll see what happens. We'd love him to march with his class, but we don't know if he's going to graduate with his class," Tom Mannetta said.
On April 3, T.C. was riding a long board, a 46-inch skateboard that makes skateboarding work more like snowboarding on pavement. No one knows what happened next; T.C. can't remember.
One of Masconomet's school nurses, Karen Flom, found him on Prospect Street with a head injury. Firefighters helped get him into an ambulance, which rushed him to a helicopter at Beverly Hospital, which flew him to Massachusetts General Hospital. He was later transferred to Spaulding Rehab.
Paul Herrick, T.C.'s godfather, said he was shocked by the accident and surprised to find out how many other kids don't wear helmets.
"No parent is prepared for that," Herrick said. "I've got two young boys of my own. They're only 3 and 1, but they'll be well-helmeted when using any skateboards or bikes. You don't realize these things go on, but you go to the hospital and it's full."
Herrick said if his godson had been wearing a helmet, a serious accident wouldn't have had such disastrous effects. Now, T.C. has to wear a helmet to protect his brain.
"He's a trained athlete. He played hockey and had a helmet, he played football and had a helmet," Herrick said. "You wear it now or wear it later, but it's much less painful before."
Tom Mannetta said his son's accident damaged the left side of his brain, which includes cognition, memory, smell and taste. It's too early to tell what the long-term effects will be, he said.
In the meantime, the father is using his son as a life lesson. Even when T.C. was in intensive care, Tom Mannetta would usher his son's friends into the room and warn them.
"We brought them in and said, 'Listen, this is what happens when you don't wear your helmet, whether you're snowboarding or bicycling, anything, you have to wear it.'"
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