SLO County football player hit by truck returns to field a year later: ‘Happy to be here’
Templeton High School football player Walker Craven was riding his bicycle to an early morning weightlifting session just over a year ago when his world went black.
Craven, who was 15 at the time, was five games into his sophomore season, and making his way as an up-and-coming starter at right guard on the offensive line.
It was still dark around 6:15 a.m. on Sept. 28, 2021, as Craven pedaled along Vineyard Drive near the Jehovah’s Witnesses hall. Visibility of the roadway ahead of him was poor.
Then Craven lost control of his bike, setting off a chain of events that could have ended his life or kept him off a football field forever.
First, he collided with a trash can that had been put out for pickup alongside the road.
That crash pushed him into the path of oncoming traffic.
A Chevrolet pickup truck traveling at 50 mph struck the teenager with a force that Craven described as “100 times the hardest tackle.” The impact left a massive dent that crumpled the front of the vehicle, a photo shows.
“I do remember not being in control of the handlebars,” Craven, now 16, said. “That’s one thing I genuinely remember. I was unconscious after it happened.”
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Nurses help Templeton High School student after crash
The mother of another Templeton High football player saw the aftermath of the crash as she was driving past and called for help. A group of morning walkers in the vicinity, one of them a nurse, also rushed to assist him.
Within minutes, two nurses were on the scene. They quickly assessed the situation and recognized that the teenager had internal injuries, said Katie Sullivan, Walker’s mother.
After stabilizing his spine, the nurses put Walker in the back seat of a car and took him to nearby Twin Cities Community Hospital, he said.
“They made the executive decision to move him because they were worried about internal bleeding,” Sullivan said. “They were both worried and nervous about that. But I was happy that they got into the hospital.”
Sullivan was asleep at the time of the incident and woke up after Templeton football coach Don Crow called her with the news.
“I flew out of bed and rushed to the hospital, which is about a mile away from our house,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan found her son lying on a hospital bed, bruised with dried blood on his face. He asked her what happened in a wondrous tone, she recalled.
“He said, ‘Do I have something on my face?” Sullivan recalled. “And I said, ‘Yeah, you have some blood on it. You got hit by a car.’ He said, ‘Oh no, that’s not good.’
“Honestly, 30 seconds later, we had the same conversation and he asked me the same questions with the same intonation.”
Doctors told Sullivan that her son’s lapse of memory was normal for someone suffering the effects of a concussion.
At Twin Cities, Walker received a CT scan, he was later told, and diagnosed with serious internal bleeding on his left kidney and spleen and lungs.
From there, he was taken by helicopter to the children’s hospital at Stanford.
While on the flight to the Bay Area, Walker remembers feeling the urge to talk to the paramedics, but not about his condition. He has interest in medicine as a future career and wanted to learn more about their jobs.
“They were on each side of the bed and the helicopter,” Craven said. “I tried to converse with them and they did not want to talk. ... I was thinking, ‘Oh man, I want to talk to those guys.’ ”
Football player treated at Stanford hospital
Walker was first placed in the intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, where doctors diagnosed his injuries.
All told, he’d fractured his neck, thoracic vertebrae, ribs, forearm and right hand; severely ruptured his kidney and spleen; and bruised his lungs, which affected his breathing. Plus, he had a major concussion.
“I learned a lot about bones, the neck, the internal organs” as the result of her son’s injuries, Sullivan said. “It was terrible.”
After a day in the ICU, Craven stabilized and was transferred to the Stanford hospital’s trauma wing, his mom said.
During his 10-day hospital stay, the Templeton High student, who stands about 5 feet, 10 inches tall, lost more than 30 pounds — with his weight dropping from 195 to 160.
However, Walker said, he had several opportunities to talk to medical professionals, which was a silver lining to the severe pain that he experienced.
“I was interested in learning about the IV (intravenous) drip system and exactly what was wrong with me,” he said. “And all the nurses and doctors who helped me out in the hospital explained everything and didn’t hesitate when I asked a question, which was extremely helpful.”
Walker, who excels in the classroom with a grade point average of well over 4.0, said he’s now considering a career as an orthopedic surgeon.
“I very much appreciated” the doctors and nurses, he said. “That kind of fostered a greater appreciation for medicine and doctors in general.”
Teen recovers from injuries
Over the next several months, Walker recovered at home with the assistance of his grandmother, Toni Sullivan, a former Twin Cities nurse who visited from her home in Montana. She helped out while his mother and stepfather were at work.
Walker’s biological father is a molecular biologist in the Bay Area.
Katie Sullivan, the director of finance and accounting at Vina Robles Vineyards & Winery in Paso Robles, said it was “amazing to watch his body bounce back ... truly a miracle.”
Despite his various injuries, the teen said, he didn’t need any surgeries.
He wore a neck brace and a cast for his arm as he began the long road to recovery.
“I just stayed at home and studied and read books,” Walker said. “That was about what I did and played lots of Sudoku. I played Sudoku every single morning.”
Walker was able to keep up his grades, but any athletic activity was put on hold to let his body heal.
For more than a month, community members brought over dinners to help the family.
“I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the community,” Sullivan said. “There was dinner brought to our house every night for the first six weeks, which allowed me to focus on Walker. There was such an outpouring of love and compassion.”
It took about “four to six months” for Walker to recover and “about eight months for everything to go back to normal,” he said.
Returning to football
Finally, in the spring and late summer, he began training for football again.
Now in his junior season, he’s back on the field playing center and defensive end as a two-way player.
His mother said she was concerned about him returning to football, but she knows he loves the sport.
“That made me feel better that doctors signed off on it,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said that doctors attributed a lot of her son’s ability to withstand the impact of the crash to his core strength.
“He used to work out a lot before it and they attribute a lot of that to basically saving his life,” Sullivan said. “And since he’s been back, he’s doubled down on his fitness. I think he’s taken that very seriously. Yeah, it scared us all, so he is bigger and stronger than he was before.”
On offense, Walker blocks for the Eagles’ speedy runners such as Landen Miller and Anthony Chavez. He and his fellow linemen have helped the run-heavy offense average 5.4 yards per carry through eight games.
Crow, the Templeton High football coach, said that “Walker’s recovery and return to play football is extremely impressive. He is a very passionate young man, and he challenged himself to make it back to play this year.”
“Walker is also an outstanding student taking five (advanced placement) courses and participates in school leadership,” Crow added. “He is an FFA officer, competes in track in the spring and is involved in many other student activities.”
“Walker’s work ethic is as impressive as any that I have seen in my 38 years of coaching,” the coach said. “He is always working to make himself better.”
Templeton has had a solid season thus far at 5-3 (2-2 Ocean League).
“I’ve been loving it,” Walker said. “I’ve been practicing with the team all season. They’re my boys now and it’s a family. I’m very happy to be here and to represent my community on field and off the field.”
Crash gives teen new perspective on life
Walker has never spoken to the driver whose truck hit him. He later learned that the man previously had a death in the family due to a vehicle accident and took the crash very hard.
“It was most definitely not his fault,” he said. “I basically did this to myself. It was during the autumn. It was dark out. I didn’t have lights on my bike. I didn’t see the black trash cans in front of me on a dark road before the sun had come up.”
Walker now has his driver’s license.
“Basically, I have banned the house from riding bikes,” Sullivan said, a ban that applies both to Walker and his younger brother, 14-year-old Lincoln Sullivan. “Every time I see a kid riding without a helmet, I feel like I need to pull them over.”
Sullivan said that she has talked to others about the day of Walker’s injury.
“It was a freaky dark morning,” Sullivan said. “I’ve had some runner friends and both of them said they saw two people fall that morning. Weird stuff was going on in the cosmos.”
Walker said he took away key life lessons from the experience.
“There are many opportunities I haven’t taken advantage of,” he said. “Before this, I was putting a lot of time into my schoolwork that prevented me from socializing with friends or after- school activities. I‘ve been putting a lot more effort into spending time with my friends and family, and having a little more fun. Fun is important.”
Walker said he’s enjoying a new experience as a FFA secretary, choosing a new activity he hadn’t tried before.
“We just had a leadership conference this past weekend,” Craven said. “That’s a big part of my life right now.”
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 5:30 AM with the headline "SLO County football player hit by truck returns to field a year later: ‘Happy to be here’."
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