[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Canton

8/12/06

SPORTS SPOTLIGHT: Lukens shoulders the pain, plays on with Buckeyes

Saturday, August 12, 2006


<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>SPORTS SPOTLIGHT TODD PORTER


COLUMBUS In the middle of the night, when Curt Lukens is doing nothing more than snoring, the painful reminder of how fragile his football career is stings down his arm.

It can be either arm.

His shoulders pop out of place during sleep. Both of them.

But Lukens is the kind of player who won’t be carried off the field and won’t have a doctor tell him when his football career is over. The Hoover High School graduate will walk away from the game at Ohio State on his own terms and under his own power.

So Lukens changed positions. The 21-year-old moved from safety to wide receiver because both shoulders are chronically injured. He has so many torn tendons in them, he just refers to it as “torn stuff.”

“The shoulder will come out of place at like 3 o’clock in the morning when I roll over in my sleep,” Lukens said. “I’ll wake up, look over and see my shoulder down toward my elbow. I get up, hold the door knob, and you know, give it a jerk. Usually on the second or third jerk, it goes back in.”

Pain?

Remember Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon”?

“It’s one of the most painful things ever when it goes out of place,” Lukens said. “When it goes back in, it feels like nothing happened.”

Just the other day during practice, Lukens caught a pass and fell on the ground. He tricked team doctor and told him the air was “knocked out of my gut.”

Instead, he sucked it up and quietly put his shoulder in place.

“It only slid out a little,” Lukens said.

Today is the first day of full-contact for the Buckeyes. Ohio State will hit the practice field and have its first “hoot-n-holler drill.” It’s a savage beating.

Lukens is a smart kid. He is on schedule to graduate in December, which would be the middle of his fourth year in Columbus.

He knows his football-playing days are numbered. He also knows he loves the game.

When doctors and coaches offered the idea of being a player-coach, Lukens scoffed at it. He wants to wear a football uniform.

“They gave me that option,” Lukens said. “They said if the shoulders keep coming out, four or five years down the road I might not be able to pick up my kids. After spring football, I sat down and thought about that. I took the pros and the cons of both situations. I thought what would life be like without playing football. I couldn’t live that life.

“I need the discipline that football brings. I need the work ethic that football teaches me. I need the time management that football forces me to use.”

So he moved to wide receiver.

And he is impressing Head Coach Jim Tressel. Lukens has speed and good hands.

He was recruited to Ohio State as an athlete more than for one specific position. Tressel thought then Lukens could fit in at linebacker, safety or wide receiver.

“I ended up playing all three,” he said. “I’m versatile enough to make the transition.”

During the team’s picture day, Lukens had fun with teammates. Most of playing football at Ohio State is the relationships players make.

Life without those relationships would be tough, if not impossible.

“I talk a lot of trash to the defensive backs now,” Lukens said. “I’ve been with them the last two years, and we always get on each other now. It’s a lot of fun. In the one-on-one periods, I’m going against my brothers the last two years, and now I’m trying to whip their butts.”

That is what football is for Curt Lukens.

It’s fun. It’s discipline. It’s camaraderie.

It’s his life.

“As long as the doctors don’t physically remove me from the field, carry me off and lock me in a cage, I’m going to keep plugging away everyday and hoping for the best,” Lukens said. Reach Repository sports writer Todd Porter at (330) 580-8340 or e-mail: todd.porter@cantonrep.com




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