High school hockey player bounces back from gruesome facial injury

For DJ LaMartina, what started as a high school hockey championship celebration ended with celebrity at the sharp edge of an upturned skate.

It happened around 7:30 p.m. March 3 at the Scottrade Center in downtown St. Louis, where 17-year-old LaMartina’s Francis Howell North High School hockey team had just beaten Fox High School of St. Louis, 3 to 1, to win the Mid-States Club Hockey Association’s Wickenheiser Cup.

LaMartina, who’s a junior at Francis Howell North in St. Charles, Mo., and the team’s center and sometime left wing, sped over the ice to join his teammates on their celebratory pile. His dash ended abruptly when he hit a teammate's skate, which sliced a deep gash in his face and broke a tooth.

News stories with gruesome photos and video of the injury soon started popping up on the Internet, including on the websites of USA Today (http://usatodayhss.com/2015/teen-hockey-goalie-suffers-horrendous-facial-injury-celebrating-title) and CBS Sports (http://www.cbssports.com/nhl/eye-on-hockey/25094658/watch-high-school-hockey-player-suffers-scary-injury-during-celebration).

LaMartina stood up on the ice, saw blood on his hands, skated to the bench and then was taken to the locker room. Trainers gave him first aid, and soon he was in an ambulance headed for nearby Children’s Hospital in St. Louis. A reconstructive plastic surgeon there used more than 60 stitches to close the wound. The hospital released LaMartina about 5 o’clock the next morning.

The wicked-looking injury, though, didn’t stop him from returning to the ice three days later at the St. Peters (Mo.) Rec-Plex for a national qualifier, playing right wing for Twin Bridges Elite, a club team in East Alton, Ill. LaMartina scored a goal in his team’s victory. He played again the next day, though Twin Bridges lost that one.

LaMartina said he felt almost no pain right after the injury, and he supposed that shock and adrenaline probably accounted for it. He started feeling pain after his surgery, though, and his surgeon prescribed the pain killer oxycodone, but he's sticking to ibuprophen.

His father, Dan LaMartina, said the surgeon had told them that, because DJ has very little body fat, as many athletes do, the wound opened wider than it otherwise would’ve, which made it look worse. The surgeon said the wound should heal completely in two to three weeks.

Brycon Johnson, a senior at Francis Howell and one of LaMartina’s teammates for the past few years, said he’d been on the bottom of the pile when LaMartina’s injury occurred.

“It’s tough for anybody to get hurt, especially celebrating,” Johnson said. “As a hockey player, he’s getting a lot better. He started out shy, but he’s getting more confidence. He’s a real neat kid.”

Joel Herr, LaMartina’s coach at Francis Howell North, described him as “a great player with a lot of potential. He’s always willing to learn.”

Herr said he’d “seen guys take some pretty gruesome injuries” on the ice.

“It was a freak accident,” he said.

Jamie Barada, coach of the Twin Bridges Elite team, said he’d also seen quite a few nasty injuries on the ice, including broken legs and head gashes. LaMartina’s was “definitely in the top 10,” he said.

LaMartina learned to ice skate and started playing ice hockey and inline hockey (on roller skates) when he was 5 years old, and he started playing organized ice hockey at 14.

[ Author's note: Dan and DJ LaMartina and I are cousins.]

A good way to live

Memorial services and funerals come at shorter intervals now that I've passed 50.

Went to one yesterday, for Rolyn Scheer (March 14, 1940-November 21, 2014). Rolly. "Rotten" Rolly. A friend of my eldest brother, Joe, and our Uncle Vic Burton, for more than 50 years, and a family member and friend of many others.

The gathering place, on West 39th Street in Kansas City, Mo., was packed with people who loved Rolly and whom he loved, and with music and Rolly's artworks, and photos on big screens at the head of the big room, chronicling his years and his family.

The place saw many tears yesterday, but it watched and heard far more laughter. It heard stories, from the seats and hallways and smaller rooms and the podium, of Rolly's unfailing kindness; acute intelligence; interest in and passion for so many areas of life, especially the outdoors and most especially camping, canoeing and fishing; artistry in several media, including poetry, glass, wood, painting and the transcendent creation of fishing flies; loyalty and commitment, first to his family and equally to his friends; wide openness to the possibility of making a new friend; rollicking humor; and sense of fun, especially of poking fun at himself. Rolly's smile was broad and illuminating, his laugh joyful and mischievous, his voice booming and resonant, his beard great. In my experience, he had the rare combination of a prodigious mind, talent and capacity wrapped in deep compassion, joy and fun. He was interested in you when he saw and spoke with you, no matter how well or slightly he knew you. I knew him only slightly compared with so many of his friends and, of course, his family. But it was easy to see who Rolly was, even by my infrequent encounters with him, and I knew from my earliest years of the love my brother and uncle had for him, because they spoke of him so often. 

Rolly's "Rotten" nickname, as my brother Joe said from the podium and as everyone who knew him knew, "was a jest; he was the soul of decency."

Here goes

Feels like early May in late November.

Spike says it means snow's gonna come wet and heavy through early March. He had that front end fall on him in his driveway summer of '99 while he was trying to get the oil pan off, and he's been able to predict weather real accurately ever since. Tagged Katrina and Sandy to the day a couple of months before each hit. Spike's been trying to get on one of the local tv stations as a weather man ever since, but he's got no formal meteorology training. But he's good -- real accurate.

So, on this May day in November, this one's for Spike.