ORLANDO, Fla. – A 16-year-old Central Florida high school football player remains hospitalized after being injured at a camp.
DJ Myers has been at Orlando Regional Medical Center since last Tuesday. His mother told News 6 he's in good spirits and has already been moved out of the intensive care unit.
"He has moments that he doesn't feel well, and that's what gets him down," Rhonda D'Haiti said.
Video taken a few weeks ago shows the teen on the field doing flips. Now, it's a complete 180 as Myers lies in the hospital fighting for a chance to walk again, unable to move the lower part of his body.
"He has range of motion in his arms, shoulders. He still having trouble gripping. You just never expect something like that to happen," she said.
D'Haiti got the call last Tuesday from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp at Stetson University, when her son made a tackle on a pile of players.
"He fell off the pile. Once he fell off the pile, his head hit the ground. The first thing he said was, 'I'm stuck,' and he just couldn't move," D'Haiti said.
Doctors tell the family there are no definite answers to what happened, but said Myers suffered a displaced vertebrae. Myers has already had one surgery since the incident.
D'Haiti said his team has rallied around him, sending him videos from the field every day. DJ has been doing Facebook Lives to keep his friends and family up-to-date on his progress.
His mother tells others not to fear the sport, that if he had a choice, her son would choose football all over again.
"He said, 'I'm broken. I'm not defeated. I'm going to bounce back from this,' and he believes that," she said. "My goal, I told him, is just to see you stand. His goal is to be on the field this year. We just put everything in God's hands."