L

acrosse saved Toran Maronic.

He and his family firmly believe that.

After suffering a traumatic brain injury during a non-contact football camp on June 24, 2016, Maronic, now a senior at Bear River High School in Grass Valley, Calif., had a 10 percent chance of regaining consciousness. His family was told if he did wake from his medically induced coma, he likely would be in a vegetative state the rest of his life and he certainly would never play sports again.

Almost two years later, Maronic is back on the field trying to help his Gold Country Lacrosse Club high school team to its second state title in three years as one of the team’s top attackers. The Stampede won the Northern California Junior Lacrosse Association high school boys’ championship and will be the No. 1 seed in the state championship for club varsity programs. Maronic will graduate from Bear River on June 8.

I

t’s a day Maronic will never forget.

Three weeks after he was named tournament MVP while helping Gold Country Lacrosse Club win the California club state title, Maronic attended a two-hand touch football 7-on-7 event in Morro Bay along with some of his Bear River teammates in preparation for what would have been his senior season.

Maronic, a wide receiver, remembers the play call. He even remembers the previous play. Then, everything for the next several months is blank or foggy. Much of what he knows from that time period is from others retelling him.

While trying to grab an overthrown ball on a corner route to the end zone, Maronic went up in the air and crashed into two spectators who had their backs turned to watch a game on the adjacent field. The collision was enough to knock him out. Unable to protect himself, he hit the ground head first.

Forty minutes later, an ambulance took Maronic to a local hospital. Doctors didn’t see an injury to his skull or spine in two CT scans, but they also couldn’t wake him, so he was airlifted to Valley Children’s in Fresno.

“It was awful,” said Maronic’s mother, Cortney. She was watching from the stands along with Toran’s father, Dave, and younger brother, Tre. “Your kid goes off in a helicopter and you don’t know what’s happening. We got to the hospital and they did an MRI, and that’s when they were able to find out what was truly wrong with him, because it was so deep.”

Toran had suffered a diffuse axonal injury in which five areas of his brain were damaged, including his brain stem.

Dr. Robert Cantu, one of the nation’s top neurologists out of Boston, would later tell the Maronics it was one of the worst brain injuries he had seen, according to Cortney.

Toran’s life would never be the same.

“It was devastating to say the least,” Cortney Maronic said. “We were all crying. The kid has always been an athlete. He played ice hockey at age 4, so he has literally played something every season, every year of his life. To be told he had a 10-percent chance of waking up and, if he did, he would be in a vegetative state and never play sports again, it was, ‘This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.’”

T

oran has always been a fighter, Cortney said. He fought for his life after being born prematurely, and this would be no different.

“I remember several times when he was in the coma still, my husband and I would look at each other and say, ‘He’s going to come out of this,’” Cortney said. “I’m sure a lot of people think that about their kid, but we just had that feeling that there was just no way God wouldn’t use Toran for something greater.”

Five days later, Toran woke from the coma and almost immediately got to work in his recovery.

He had to re-learn how to do everything from walking to talking, so he had physical, speech and occupational therapy every day. Most of it he did with one eye cracked open because that was all he could manage, and he could only point to words on a board to answer questions for the first couple of weeks before regaining verbal ability.

It wasn’t long before a lacrosse stick was back in his hand as part of his physical therapy — he would work on passing and cradling while sitting in a wheelchair.

And, after just 17 days, Maronic was released to go home. Doctors had initially told him he would need about six months in the hospital.

“No doctor can explain why I was able to do what I did and why I’m able to do what I do now,” he said.

It was still a long road once Toran returned home, though. He needed a gait belt to walk because his balance was so off, and any fall would be catastrophic. The brain trauma made him extremely fatigued, so he would sleep most of the day, waking only to eat or do therapy.

Toran was basically considered to be in a low-arousal coma — he said he was in a fog for the first four or five months of his recovery and doesn’t remember things chronologically, if at all — but when it was time to work, he was motivated, anxious to regain a sense of normalcy.

“It got easier as time went on,” he said. “I lost almost 30 pounds in the hospital, because obviously I didn’t work out for all that time, and I had a severe brain injury, so I lost my balance and just all sorts of things were wrong. My interior equilibrium was off, my vision was off, so when I first started going to the gym, I was lifting weight I could lift my freshman year of high school and I just kind of back-tracked in all of it, but I worked out every day — for a few months twice a day. I did lacrosse stuff every single day. It all gradually started to come together the more I worked at it.”

Toran’s club lacrosse coach, Greg Porter, came over to his house four times a week to work with him in addition to his regular physical therapy, incorporating the sport Toran said always just seemed to be part of his genetic makeup.

The Maronic family credits Porter, an anesthesiologist, for helping Toran improve so quickly, but Porter said Toran was just determined to get back on the field.

“One of the things that resonated with him even at the hospital was a lacrosse stick,” Porter said. “He wanted to hold it and catch tennis balls. His dad has a video of him trying to throw a behind-the-back pass in the hospital. Doctors let him know he was never going to play football again, but they gave him a chance at playing lacrosse again and he locked in on that.”

Porter continued, “It was a progression because in the beginning he couldn’t really catch and throw. We did the most basic skills, like teaching a kid, but it was amazing day by day how his brain would recover. He worked like an animal — ran, lifted, did agility and hand-eye coordination drills. Some days we would work five minutes and he tired out, and some days it was 30 minutes to an hour. As he got stronger, we went to a field and worked on shooting drills, seeing if we could get his dodge back, and soon enough, Toran was back.”

B

ut not being able to compete like he used to was frustrating, Toran said, and he dealt with a lot of anger over that first year. Socially, he struggled, too.

Because his brain needed extra rest, he could only handle half days of school and it’s taken two years to complete his senior workload. He hardly remembers anything from last year, though he still managed good grades and appeared fine on the outside.

“His intelligence wasn’t damaged, which is good, but, he really struggled socially,” Cortney said. “With a brain injury, they look completely fine on the outside, so kids at school who had been his friends and teammates slowly one-by-one started leaving his side. They just didn't think he was as injured or he was faking because he looked so good. ... That was pretty devastating.

“You add all these things to a kid who has completely changed. He’s not the same person he was. He’s struggling to just have some normalcy and then you add all these things on top of it, it was just a rough year.”

Toran attended practices with his lacrosse club last season just to feel like part of the team still and did what he could without contact. He even ran cross country to experience that competitive edge again.

Finally, last summer he was cleared to play, and that is when he said he started feeling more like himself. On Feb. 24, just 20 months after the injury, Toran played his first lacrosse game, and he helped Gold Country to a one-loss regular season as the team’s third-leading scorer.

“Relief, pride, shock, pure joy,” Toran said when asked how it felt to get back on the field. “Lacrosse always meant so much to me. The fact I’m able to be back on the field after such a horrific thing is just amazing. When I got clearance to play at my one-year checkup, I was bawling my eyes out I was so happy.”

Cortney still winces at times while watching Toran play, but couldn’t bear to hold him back from the thing that provided so much hope during a difficult recovery.

“There are times where there will be a couple defenders on him and I hold my breath,” Cortney said. “I do that with everything he does, especially when he started driving again, and he just has to be careful. ... It’s something that could have happened in our backyard, and you can’t bubble wrap them as much as you’d like to. Sports have done my boys more good than harm, even though Toran suffered this. They still have taught them to be the men they are today. It’s just a huge part of our lives.

“Lacrosse was kind of the focal point to get him better. It saved his life. It gave him a reason to get better. How could we not let him play?”

Maronic, the Stampede’s third-leading scorer this season, will graduate from Bear River on June 8. He plans to attend Boise State and study physical therapy. He also travels the country to talk with athletes suffering from TBIs.

T

o the untrained eye, Toran is every bit the athlete he was before the injury, a strong, 6-foot-2, 185-pound lefty with all the tools to be successful.

He was named Gold Country’s 2016 state tournament MVP after helping the Stampede rally from a five-goal deficit in the third quarter of the Northern championship game, scoring three goals coming out of halftime en route to an 11-10 win over Oakland Tech. Gold Country went on to claim the state title the next game with a 19-5 win over St. John Bosco.

“He’s just a stud,” Porter said. “In my 10 years coaching high school lacrosse, he’s the best I’ve coached between restraining lines. He can come off the ball and dodge, he’s so elusive, fast and quick. He’s the best athlete I’ve ever coached from soup to nuts. He’s a natural lefty and has a blazing shot. It’s huge to have a natural lefty with his athleticism and shooting ability.”

Toran still has that ability. He entered May with 30 goals and 18 assists, and Porter has a few plays designed specifically to catch him coming across the field to bury a shot.

However, Porter notices there is still some trepidation in Toran, and understandably so.

“I recognize there are parts of his game that are absent, but even with that, he’s head and shoulders above the average player,” Porter said. “He’s just not as quick and as sharp as used to be, and he would be first to tell you that. He was performing at such a high level and few can perform to that level, so even now he’s a huge contribution. But without the injury, he would have 100 points. That’s how good he is.”

Toran knows he’s not the same player he was. He probably could have gone on to play college lacrosse had it not been for his injury, but even to this day, he still battles fatigue. The rigors of a collegiate sport would be too much to handle.

Instead, he will attend Boise State, where he plans to study to become a physical therapist and help athletes get back on their feet after injuries.

Even now, Toran is already making a difference in the lives of others experiencing traumas similar to his. He and his family began T3 Charities (‘T’ for Toran and No. 3 was his football number), which is self-funded, to help people with traumatic brain injuries, as well as locals facing hardships.

Toran travels the country and talks with athletes suffering from TBIs, offering hope and advice to their families, and T3 Charities provides care packages and financial assistance.

“The No. 1 thing for a lot of these athletes is losing the sports,” Cortney said. “They don’t know who they are without it, and there’s a lot of depression that goes along with it. Toran faced some of that but was able to pull himself out of it. He gives people hope they can come back from it.” 

Toran is the picture of hope for anyone dealing with a tough situation, Porter said.

“Life was good,” Porter said. “He was athletic, got good grades. To have it taken away in a blink, it’s heart wrenching. To come back like he did, he’s humbled by it. He’s a miracle. I saw him in the ICU, and I’ve been in medicine and seen a lot of neurotraumas. I see what happens to a lot of these people. They’re drooling on themselves. They can’t help it. No one can believe he rehabbed like he has. The odds were stacked against him. But, he’s a survivor and doing something with it.”