Fri Sep 03 2010
There wasn’t any time to think about it.
Playing in his first seventh grade lacrosse game as a goalie, Joshua Slone found out right away why no one else on his Oldham County team wanted to guard the net. While Joshua stood his post, the Lexington Christian shooter found a seam, cocked his stick and unfurled a five-ounce solid-rubber ball at a speed that would have attracted the attention of a state trooper had it been a licensed vehicle.
BAM! The ball ricocheted off the side of Joshua’s helmet and he crumpled to the ground. “I got knocked out,” he said later. It was the start of a thrilling, punishing career.
Joshua, now a sophomore at Western Hills, first became interested in lacrosse as an 11-year-old, stumbling across the Virginia-Navy game on TV one summer day.
“I liked the speed, the physicality,” he said, sitting in his father’s office at the Military Records and Research Branch on Louisville Road. “I liked that is was high-scoring, but I don’t like that anymore.”
The youngest in a family of athletes, Joshua took up lacrosse in the seventh grade as a midfielder with a passion for competition and a shaky grasp of the rules. He eventually moved to goalie when no one on his team wanted to play the position.
A goalie didn’t get to run the field, make fancy stick moves or score points. A goalie got treated like a human bull’s eye. The body shots didn’t deter Joshua, though. In fact, they motivated him.
Playing for a public school in a fast-growing sport dominated by private schools, Joshua saw plenty of action in net.
He finished his eighth grade year with an 83 percent save rate (60 percent is considered good) and was the net-minder for the championship team at West Point’s lacrosse camp later that summer.
In the fall of 2008, Joshua and his older brother Arie transferred to Western Hills and joined the Wolverine football squad. Entering his freshman year, Joshua couldn’t wait to begin his high school athletic career.
Then came the shot for which no goalie can prepare.
***
There wasn’t any time to think about it.
Things moved fast Joshua’s first week at Western Hills – new teachers, new classmates, new coaches. It was enough to make any kid’s stomach turn, but Joshua especially struggled to keep his food down – all the time. The feeling had started that summer and had only gotten worse through two-a-day football practices and the start of school.
“I thought it was just nerves,” he said.
Finally after a weekend of vomiting, a CT scan revealed the nature of Joshua’s problem: A lymphatic cyst had developed where Joshua’s small intestine met his stomach, creating a road block in his digestive tract. Doctors recommended a gastrojejunostomy, a surgical operation that would make a new passage between the two organs – and they recommended it immediately.
“There wasn’t any time to think about it,” Joshua said. “I was kind of scared.”
That’s how Joshua ended up in a patient gown at Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 2, his 14th birthday, leaning on the support of family and friends, marginalizing the fear by thinking of the surgery as just another obstacle to overcome, just another kind of shot from the opposition.
That fear would return again 21 days later after the new connection healed into an insufficiently narrow passage, forcing doctors to operate a second time. The second procedure worked, but the weeks of sickness and the operations had certainly taken their toll.
Joshua’s modest 5’ 7’’ 130-pound frame dwindled to 103 pounds at its lowest. His youthful glow took a leave of absence as he adhered to a strict diet and plenty of rest.
“It’s tough for him,” said Arie, who wore Joshua’s number at the start of Western Hills’ football season while he recovered in the hospital. “I can tell he’s been through a lot of pain, but I think he’s been tough. He’s never complained about the pain.”
Gradually, the incision on Joshua’s upper abdomen turned into a scar.
Sports served as one of Joshua’s main motivations during the long days of recovery. The day after the Wolverines’ season-opening win over Grant County, the football team visited him in the hospital, giving him the game ball from the night before.
“It kept my spirits up,” Joshua said. “I really wanted to get out and get to the games.”
He made his first appearance on the Western Hills’ sideline Oct. 3, the Friday of Homecoming Week. By November he was running routes again in practice. He never got into a game during football season, but he joined the wrestling team and wrestled at 119 pounds in the winter. The weight didn’t return overnight for Joshua, but he slowly began to pick up where he left off. He had absorbed the worst body shot in his life and gotten right back up.
When spring arrived, Joshua was ready to put on the pads, pick up the stick and protect the net.
***
There wasn’t any time to think about it.
During a recent practice with Joshua’s new team the Bluegrass Bats, a shot glanced off his stick and nailed him in the gut. Joshua’s eyes widened.
“You OK? Did it hurt?” Kevin Johnson, Joshua’s position coach asked.
No, it didn’t hurt. It was nothing. The drill continued.
Joshua was back in goal for Oldham County’s junior varsity lacrosse team this spring. He tried out for the Bluegrass Bats, one of Louisville’s premier lacrosse travel teams, in mid-May and made the team as a backup goalie. As a sophomore, Joshua is one of the youngest players on a team stocked with juniors and seniors from private Catholic schools, such as St. Xavier and Trinity.
Just this past week the Bats competed at the Gaitcup National Tournament in Gettysburg, Pa., against some of the best teams in the country, with representatives of top college lacrosse programs in attendance. In January, Joshua will travel with the team to Tampa, Fla., to compete in the Tournament of Champions.
During a scrimmage last month against a college club team, Joshua played well enough to see his Bats teammates outscore the opposition 6-5.
“I actually got the win,” he said.
The peculiar sport that piqued his interest three years ago has turned into a full-fledged commitment.
“He’s got a lot of grit,” said Johnson. “He might lack some physical maturity, but he brings a certain mental maturity. He’s a grinder.”
A grinder who has overcome far more than the other team’s best shot.
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