Coach David Geer gets out of bed in the morning and heads to the kitchen to do his daily devotional. “I can bring beauty out of the ashes of lost dreams,” it reads. “I can glean Joy out of sorrow, Peace out of adversity.”

He makes breakfast for himself and his wife, Valerie, makes them both coffee and helps get her lunch together. After she leaves for work, he walks a few miles around the neighborhood and does a few exercises with dumbbells and resistance bands to get his strength back up. He reads a little bit and does a few chores, like doing the laundry or cleaning the pool. Since a bad concussion left him unable to go to work, Coach Geer does as much work as he can at home to help out his wife.

He doesn’t remember exactly what happened. Coach Geer and his family were just lounging and baking in the summer sun. He hit his head doing a front flip into the backyard pool, or maybe he was diving. The details were fuzzy. The collision with the concrete made his head throb, but it was nothing major, just a bump.

“I got out and thought ‘wow, that really hurt,’” Coach Geer said, “but I just kept going on with my day; it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

On Aug. 16, Coach Geer was enjoying one of his last days of summer vacation at his home when he hit his head. He got out of the pool and lit the grill, spent some more time with his daughter, Courtney. He left the house and headed to Walmart, drove to get ice and then to Tom Thumb to pick up his prescription. When he got home, he laid down to take an afternoon nap.

Several hours later, he still was not awake. After not responding Courtney’s questions or attempts to wake him, she called 911. The sirens roared and the fire department had no success in waking him either. The EMS raced him to Mansfield Methodist Hospital.  

“One minute everything was great and fine,” Coach Geer said. “Ten seconds later I didn’t know what was going on. It happens that fast.”

By the time Coach Geer arrived at the hospital, his consciousness was coming back. For a while, he remembered what had happened. He was talking and able to move around. But after a few hours it all started to fade.

In the days to follow, Coach Geer would have to relearn to walk and gain back his motor skills. Test after test, CAT scans and MRIs, the doctors thought it was a stroke or that he had a seizure because of a concussion. But all of the tests came back fine.

The nurses taught Coach Geer how to walk again, taking trips up and down the hallway with a walker. Because of his massive concussion, he suffered balance and slight vision issues, which caused the ground to feel as though it were slanting in different directions.

“The physical part was scary to me, being an athlete and being a coach all my life. When you’re sitting there in bed and they’re trying to get you up and you’re just falling all over the place. I mean, wow,” Coach Geer said. “As an adult when you have to learn to walk again it’s really scary.”

School started several days later, but Coach Geer was still at home. His daily routine changed drastically. For the past 30 years, he had gotten up, gotten ready and left for his job. However, the doctors told him that he needed to take it slow, no driving and no work for the time being.

Because Coach Geer hasn’t been able to attend work and he didn’t sign up for the sick bank at the end of last year, he has run out of his allotted absent days. Every day he misses work, the district docks his pay. Between hospital bills still coming in and his mother-in-law having acute leukemia, the Geer’s cannot afford all of it.

“It’s been tough on my wife,” Coach Geer said. “She’s been trying to find out how much all of this is going to cost, but it is stressful. The doctors told me I can’t worry about that or I won’t get better. But I still think about it.”

After the district began to dock his pay, Coach Jake Bostick and others created a donation website to help the Geer’s family pay bills. Coach Bostick has known Coach Geer for a year, but says that he quickly became like a mentor to him.

“I spoke with Coach Geer and he was very stressed about missing work and other situations besides getting healthy. He never one time asked for help,” Coach Bostick said. “But I could tell he needed something from someone. I was just doing what anyone else would do for me.”

Coach Geer posts updates regularly on the donation page, keeping everyone up to speed on his condition and progress. The goal for the page was set at 11,000 dollars to help Coach Geer and his family.

“He always has good advice on how to handle stressful situations. He is almost like a big brother to me,” Coach Bostick said. “Everyone in our hallway likes him because he provides great comedic relief between classes.”