Forward back from leg injury

In the 27th minute of Thursday’s home opener against Rolla, Hickman goalie Brent Tegerdine cleared the ball from outside of the penalty box. The ball happened to land at the feet of forward Blaise Parker, and he scored the first goal in Hickman’s 2-1 win.

It was a familiar sight. Within the first 30 seconds of a game last year against Rolla, Tegerdine hit a long ball to Parker, who upon receiving the ball scored.

Recently, Parker’s offensive presence this season wasn’t that certain. Last summer, while playing with the Columbia Pride club team, Parker nearly lost his senior season. An opponent came in from the side and slide tackled Parker, but something was wasn’t right. Parker’s leg was planted, but his knee continued forward, and next thing he knew he had a partially torn anterior cruciate ligament and a bruised medial collateral ligament.

Parker sat out the next five weeks, but when two-a-days started on Aug. 7, he was back with the team. Pain forced him to sit out some of the first practices, but on Thursday night, Parker was back in the starting lineup and was fit enough to play most of the game.

“Blaise always comes out to play hard,” said junior forward Evan Camden, who scored Hickman’s second goal. “There has never been a time when I’ve seen him slack. It’s nothing new that he comes out and scores.”

This is the third year that Parker has played on the varsity team. Last season, he started most of the games and was the team’s assist leader. This season, knee-brace and all, teammates said they haven’t seen much of a difference from the veteran forward.

“For Blaise to go through such an injury like that and then bounce back, and still be as good as he is now, and scoring, it’s tremendous,” said Tegerdine, who has played with Parker all four years at Hickman and for two years on the same club. “... He is still the same hustler.”

It’s not quite that simple for Parker. He said it is feeling better, but that it is going to take some more time to get used to the knee brace. He has been keeping fit by running outside of practice and through a physical education and strength training class. He proved that fitness in the mandatory 3-mile run. All varsity players were required to run it in less than 20 minutes, 30 seconds.

Parker and the Kewpies will have to test their fitness again before they have much time to rest.

By Saturday night, Hickman will have played three more games in the 17th Annual Quincy Notre Dame Soccer Tournament in Quincy, Ill.