Maurice McClain can tell you the sound of a dream being shattered: Crack.

It’s April 20. McClain lines up at free safety — a position previously occupied by Quentin Harris, now a rookie with the Arizona Cardinals — during a Syracuse football practice in the Carrier Dome.

After three years of special-teams work, this is McClain’s chance. He’ll start when SU opens its season in a few months. He’s happy.

So he never thinks, on that Saturday morning, how far one play will take him: From laying on the cold Carrier Dome turf, leg mangled, to the operating table. Through a summer of hellish workouts to that breezy October evening when he’s finally happy again.

Now, one more play is all McClain wants. His mother said he’ll suit up for the Orangemen against Rutgers on Saturday, itching to run on the field for the first time since one play nearly ended his career.

***

The play

It’s 11:15 a.m. on that April Saturday. After a handoff to fullback Chris Davis on a goal-line play, McClain, a fifth-year senior, plugs the hole in the defensive line.

There’s a pileup. Someone rolls onto McClain’s left leg. That’s when he hears that sound — crack.

After his leg is wrapped, McClain is rushed to the hospital. At 4:30 p.m., McClain goes into surgery.

The diagnosis: a broken ankle, tibia and fibula.

***

‘His football career is over’

Patricia Abdus-Salaam, McClain’s mother, dropped everything at 3 p.m. when she heard the news. By 4, she was on a plane to Syracuse from her home in Elizabeth, N.J.

‘I knew he was going to be OK physically, but mentally?” she says. “I had to be there for him.”

When Abdus-Salaam arrived in Syracuse two hours after she heard the news, SU head coach Paul Pasqualoni was waiting for her.

“That’s when he told me,” Abdus-Salaam says, “(McClain’s) football career was over.”

McClain wouldn’t be able to walk until October, but SU would work on getting him a teaching degree so he could come back and help coach the Orangemen, Pasqualoni said.

At best, doctors said later, McClain might return for a bowl game.

‘It was sickening,’ Abdus-Salaam says.

***

‘Get up, Get up’

‘When I saw him laying there, and I saw him screaming,” safety Keeon Walker says, “I knew something was wrong.”

Walker, along with receiver David Tyree, have roomed with McClain for four years.

‘Get up, get up,’ Tyree remembers saying after the injury. ‘When you don’t see a guy getting up, I mean, that’s my roommate of four years, that’s my best friend.’

The horrific sight made it difficult to take the field again.

‘Whenever you see an injury like that, it messes you up in the head a little bit,’ redshirt freshman cornerback Steve Gregory said. “Mentally, you try not to let it have an effect, but the day that it happened, everyone was a little weary.’

***

The rehab

When the doctors first told McClain he would never play for Syracuse again, he knew he had to prove them wrong.

His rehabilitation began a week after surgery to set his leg. He spent the summer in Syracuse, more than 200 miles from his mother and two sisters in Elizabeth.

His first few workouts consisted of sitting in the whirlpool and riding an exercise bike. He would often rehab up to three times a day. When team workouts began in August, McClain’s motivation to return grew stronger.

‘Right before camp I felt like I was getting better,” McClain says, “and I wanted to push more and more to get back. I wanted to do the same things the guys were doing.’

Eight weeks later he was. On Oct. 8, team doctor Irving Raphael cleared McClain to resume full-contact practice.

“Mo was walking way before he was supposed to be walking,’ Walker says, ‘but he would only bring his crutches to workouts just so the coaches would think he was using them.’

So less than six months after his injury, McClain was back on the practice field.

Pasqualoni, the same man who told McClain’s mother that her son would never play football again, called the return ‘a miracle.’

***

‘He was the brains of the operation’

To his teammates, McClain is the sort of humble guy they can’t help but respect.

‘His motor is always running,” Walker says. “During sprint drills, we’d be running around the track. He’s always the first one.’

Before his injury, McClain bided his time as a backup and special-teams contributor.

But when McClain went down, Syracuse lost more than a free safety. McClain, the silent leader, was supposed to assume Harris’ role as defensive leader.

McClain would’ve rounded out an all-senior secondary with Will Hunter and Latroy Oliver as cornerbacks and Walker at strong safety.

‘We lost a huge sense of leadership in the secondary,’ Tyree says. “He was the brains of the operation. It’s like losing the head off of Voltron.’

***

‘The perfect roommate’

‘He’s like a brother, my best friend,’ Tyree says. ‘Mo was almost the perfect roommate.

“He was always responsible for everything, like, ‘Don’t use dishes, don’t use no cups, man.’ He was really neat. Me and Keeon were the dogs of the house.’

McClain, slightly embarrassed, disputes that claim.

‘I’d let them use cups,” he says.

‘We did everything together,’ McClain says. ‘It was a happy home.’

***

‘I will be there’

When McClain suits up for Saturday’s home game against Rutgers — his first since the injury — his biggest fan will be sitting in the bleachers.

“I will be there,” his mother says.

Though Abdus-Salaam’s schedule originally had her missing all of SU’s October and November games because of work, she changed her plans.

McClain’s return comes a week later than he had hoped. As a sophomore, McClain started his first game at West Virginia, but he wasn’t on SU’s travel roster for last Saturday’s game against the Mountaineers.

Still, even for McClain — the perfectionist, the potential nerve center of the SU defense — missing his miraculous goal by one week isn’t so bad.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Abdus-Salaam says. “Maurice never gave up.”

Published on October 22, 2002 at 12:00 pm