As basketball signings go, this one hardly seemed special.
The kid with the pen in his left hand and the letter of intent in front of him had barely played high school ball and had been a part-time starter in his first season at a junior college.
The school he was about to wed resides in a “low-major” NCAA Division I conference, which means he’ll appear on ESPN about as often as the Bears reach the Super Bowl.
But when Chris Gonzalez slid that pen across that paper Thursday in Corsicana, Texas, it was as much a miracle as a commitment to spend part of his life at Western Illinois University.
It symbolized a promising future when only nine months earlier there was doubt the former Thornridge player had a future at all.
That was after a horrific accident Feb. 9 in which an 18-wheel truck plowed into the van in which Gonzalez was riding on the way home from a game in Paris, Texas. Two of his Navarro College teammates died in the accident, and it seemed Gonzalez might join them.
The freshman was in critical condition with a torn aorta, seven broken ribs, a collapsed lung, facial injuries and fractures in his right shoulder, front and back pelvis and left hip.
“I was in such bad condition they thought they lost me,” Gonzalez said by phone Wednesday.
He would have surgery on his nose and upper lip, surgery to have three plates and 27 bolts and screws put in his midsection and surgery to install a piece of polyester in his aorta.
He would have four operations in all, and a doctor would tell him he might never walk again–and basketball, forget it.
Except that Gonzalez wouldn’t. He hadn’t begun to play organized basketball until his senior year at Thornridge, and he wasn’t ready to let his brief career disappear without a fight.
“I thought, `Man, I just started. I hope this isn’t the end of it,'” he said.
So shortly after his weeks-long hospitalization ended, Gonzalez returned to the gym. With a friend’s help, he shot free throws in what became a daily ritual.
He was on crutches until mid-June. In early September he got a doctor’s release to resume practicing, though he still has a slight limp and is undergoing physical therapy.
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Gonzalez and Navarro coach Lewis Orr have agreed he probably will sit out games this season, which would give him three years of eligibility at Western Illinois. Gonzalez works out occasionally with Navarro while helping Orr coach the team.
Western coach Derek Thomas cannot comment about Gonzalez, a 6-foot-8-inch guard, until he receives the letter of intent.
Gonzalez attracted interest from several top programs last season, but their coaches backed off after the accident. Thomas continued to call, and Thornridge coach Mike Flaherty believes that may pay off big.
“He’s not the kind of kid Western would be able to recruit successfully if there weren’t those questions about him,” Flaherty said of Gonzalez, who has grown more than a foot since he entered high school and may not be done yet. “You don’t see many kids that size with his shooting range and who can see the floor and pass like he could.
“If he gets even remotely back where he was, he’s a steal for them.”
Off-court problems, mainly academic ones, kept Gonzalez out of Flaherty’s program for three years. His junior year, Gonzalez’s mother, Carla Gomez-Smith, wouldn’t let him play because of his grades.
“He was just too lazy to open that book,” she said.
The following year she changed tactics and let her son play, hoping that might motivate him in the classroom. It worked well enough that he graduated on time, something that had been in doubt entering his senior year.
Subpar grades, however, forced Gonzalez to attend junior college, and he wound up at Navarro, about 50 miles south of Dallas and light-years from Chicago.
“I saw tumbleweed, and I thought I was in an Old West movie,” he said. “I was shocked.”
Fortunately, it shocked Gonzalez into getting serious about academics. His accident only intensified that transition.
“It has matured him considerably,” Gomez-Smith said. “He doesn’t seem to take life as cavalierly as he did.
“Mentally he has been so strong through it all. I remember in the hospital when he said, `Mom, I’m going to be OK because God didn’t give me all this height for nothing.'”
The ordeal has taught Gonzalez to assume nothing and feel grateful for almost everything.
“Being able to change the sheets on my bed or press the numbers on the phone to call my mom,” he said. “You just name it, I don’t take anything for granted.
“I don’t even take time for granted.”
Maybe that’s why when Thomas offered him a scholarship in September after watching him practice, Gonzalez had another cinematic moment.
“It’s like in the movies, you look back on your life and everything goes real fast,” he said. “Everything from the accident to the recovery, every little moment went through my head so fast, everything I had been through.
“I was so happy for that moment to come.”
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