Injured NIC coach thankful to be alive

COEUR d'ALENE — George Swanson can’t remember the Jeep Cherokee barreling toward him at 70 mph, or the collision that sent his body flying 60 feet.

The North Idaho College assistant men's basketball coach can't even recall his first eight days confined to a Sacred Heart Medical Center bed due to the trauma and numbing medication which coursed through his veins.

But just hours after Swanson was rushed to the hospital after he and another NIC coach were struck by a vehicle in September while waiting for a tow truck alongside Interstate 90, he was — albeit in physical shock — still thinking about basketball.

Swanson, who suffered a broken pelvis, femur, scapula and multiple arm and rib fractures, delivered a message to a small group of his misty-eyed players who visited him in the intensive care unit.

“I didn't recruit you here not to coach you this season,” he told them. “I’ll be back.”

It was a bold proclamation from someone NIC head men's basketball coach Corey Symons thought was dead upon impact.

Symons was the driver of a Dodge Durango that hit a deer en route to a recruiting trip in Portland, disabling the vehicle in the right lane of I-90 and prompting the coaches to stand about 20 feet from the road. The driver of the westbound Jeep didn't see the tow truck and, to avoid the collision, swerved to the side of the road where the coaches were standing in a circle.

Symons and play-by-play announcer Dick Haugen were able to evade the Jeep and assistant coach Ameer Shamsud-din was clipped, suffering a broken foot. Chris Kemp and Swanson weren't as fortunate.

Kemp was life-flighted to Sacred Heart after suffering a fractured vertebrae and head trauma. He was released two days later. Swanson, however, faced a much more arduous road to recovery.

The 46-year-old experienced a series of surgeries before he awoke with four metal plates and a handful of screws in his body. He spent 16 days in the hospital before he was released, and has worked the last six weeks in physical therapy.

Doctors didn't expect Swanson to walk for 6 to 9 months.

"The chances of him coming back at all were slim to none, we thought," Symons said this week. "We figured he'd heal and we could get him back next season."

But Swanson, whose recruiting efforts have helped NIC remain one the foremost junior college programs in the Northwest, found a way to expedite the process.

Sporting crutches, Swanson gets up every morning for physical therapy before making the trek to his team's practice. There, he'll even engage in some physical workouts and ride a training bike between barking out orders.

"I didn't want to be stuck at home or in a hospital," said Swanson, who has lost 40 pounds since the accident. "And the way out was to work hard."

On Nov. 18, when NIC opened its season at the Portland Community College Tournament, Swanson had already resumed his bench duties. It may not have been with the same level of physical comfort he had a year ago when NIC posted the program's first undefeated regular season, but that didn't matter. He was there.

Sophomore forward Zaequan Satterthwaite still can't believe the man who recruited him from Washington, D.C., to rural Idaho has made such a swift recovery.

"It just shows how truly strong of a person he is," Satterthwaite said. "That inspires me and that inspires all the guys, too. He's blessed to be alive, let alone here with us walking around yelling at us and all that stuff."

Swanson now jokingly chides his players with zingers like, "What, you can't run? I was hit by a car." But he’s dead serious when it comes to gratitude.

"I go to sleep every night and I say to myself I'm blessed because, one; I'm not paralyzed. Two; I get to spend time with my kids. Three; I still get to do exactly what I want to do in life,” Swanson said. “It's unreal when you think about the severity of it all.

"It makes you more of a family man, I'll tell you that. I missed the kids. Those nights when you're by yourself... Some nights the players stayed with me. Without them being there, I don't know where I'd be."