Football: Injury may end up defining Grayslake North's Gentile - in a good way

Sometimes, inspiration can come from the strangest places … such as, frustration, desperation and tribulation.

For senior Merrick Gentile, that's what the training room at Grayslake North often represented over the last eight months.

And yet, surprisingly, it's a place that wound up inspiring him, too.

The star quarterback and shortstop, who missed the entire 2015 football season and so far all of the current baseball season, has never spent so much time in a training room in his life. But when he blew out his right knee during a scrimmage a week before football's season opener last August, his fate was sealed.

On the heels of ACL and meniscus reconstruction, it's been months and months of rehab and therapy for Gentile, who is not too far from being back to 100 percent, but is still working at it. The training room became, and still is, his second home.

"I'm rehabbing six days a week. I'm always there," Gentile said. "This is not what I was thinking my senior year would be like. Not at all."

The silver lining to Gentile's long road back is that he thinks he's found his calling for down the road.

Gentile has decided that he is going to study to become an athletic trainer and sports psychologist at Wisconsin-Whitewater, which is one of the schools that was interested in him as a football player before his injury and stuck around through all the rehab.

Gentile will be on the depth chart next fall as a quarterback for Wisconsin-Whitewater.

"Going through a major injury like this is so tough and I want to help people who have been dealt the same hand as me," Gentile said. "It will be majoring in exercise science and psychology. It's definitely the physical side of it, but it's also mental. Injuries like this are so mental.

"I had no idea what I wanted to do before this injury, but I think this really is my calling. It interests me. It will be a good fit for me."

Gentile sees Wisconsin-Whitewater as the perfect fit, too. He says both he and the football program have a lot in common.

"Whitewater isn't Division I, but they play like they're Division I," Gentile said. "They are really competitive and they want to win championships. But they're small, so they kind of play like they have a chip on their shoulder.

"They have a chip on their shoulder, and so do I."

Pre-injury, Gentile was being recruited by Division I schools and likely would have ended up at a mid-major, such as Northern Illinois, Bowling Green or Central Michigan. But the injury, which occurred when Gentile made a cut on a run that resulted, ironically, in a touchdown, scared off most teams.

And the few teams that stuck with Gentile, such as Central Michigan, downgraded their offers to preferred walk-on status.

"Obviously, it sucked to see people walk away," Gentile said. "But it just made me feel that much more blessed to have a place that really wanted me like Whitewater. And it put this chip on my shoulder to really go out and play even harder. I want to show all those schools that walked away: your loss."

The 6-foot, 215-pound Gentile has good reason to believe in himself. He was one of the top returning quarterbacks in Lake County before his injury, and would have been starting at quarterback for a third straight season.

As a junior, Gentile completed 92 of 158 passes for 1,321 yards and 12 touchdowns with 4 interceptions. He also rushed for 635 yards and 10 touchdowns.

"I had a lot of big goals," Gentile said. "I wanted to help us go far into the playoffs, I wanted to be at the top of the leaders in the area (for passing and rushing yards). I wanted to set records. I wanted to be the guy.

"When this first happened, I was like, 'Why me? Why me?' I threw a garbage can in the training room. There might have been some cussing. It was pretty emotional because I really wanted to play. This was my senior year."

Instead, Gentile has watched from the sidelines. At first, in a wheelchair. Then while on crutches. He made 7 of Grayslake North's 10 football games. He attends baseball games whenever they don't conflict with his rehab.

"I was there, at the games, but it was so hard," Gentile said of the football season. "I was sitting there in a wheelchair watching all my friends play the game I love. I loved watching them, but I wanted to be out there playing with them.

"I went from craving Friday nights, to dreading them."

Gentile leaned on his teammates and coaches and trainers for strength.

After Grayslake North defeated Lakes in its season opener, Gentile's teammates loaded up on their buses and headed straight to his house, unannounced and unexpected. Gentile missed the game because he had just had his surgery that day. So his buddies figured he could use some cheering up.

The Knights showed up and congregated on Gentile's front yard. Gentile eventually emerged on crutches and got a hug from every single teammate.

"That's probably the best memory I have of my entire career, even more than all the big games and wins and everything," Gentile said. "I will never forget that. To feel like that much a part of a team was pretty amazing.

"That really helped me, and pretty soon after that as I started to progress in my rehab, I realized I was actually pretty blessed. I was going to be able to play football again. Some people have accidents and they get everything taken away, even their life. I was still going to get the chance to play. That really put everything into perspective for me."

Gentile has finally reached the last stages of his rehab. He's in the eighth month of what is typically a seven- to 12-month recovery.

He says he's at about 85 percent to 90 percent healed and would love to join the baseball team for the stretch run of the season. Gentile would have been a four-year starter in baseball had he played this season.

"We're not going to rush anything, because I want to make sure I'm healthy for next year (football at Whitewater)," Gentile said. "But it definitely would be nice to play at least something in my senior year."

Indeed. The training room at Grayslake North has served Gentile well, even better than he could have ever expected.

But he deserves a change of scenery before he graduates.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

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