It started out simply as another Friday night football game that I was staffing as a freelancer for both the Democrat-Gazette and the Times of North Little Rock. It was going to get the usual 10 inches or less in the Dem-Gaz, and the usual rehash later the next week in the weekly Times.

It became a news story. I still keep a copy of the Dem-Gaz from the following day, with the photo of one of Tolbert’s teammates, mostly focused on the player’s face, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Tolbert, who was one of the great two-way players in the state that year as a receiver and safety for the North Little Rock Charging Wildcats, came in to make a stop on Willie Hicks, a Little Rock Parkview running back, who had broken the line of scrimmage. Tolbert lowered his head and tried to hit the runner above the knees, just as the back made another cut to steer clear. Tolbert’s helmet met the player’s thigh.

It broke the second and third cervical vertebrae in his neck, though at that moment all we knew was that Tolbert wasn’t getting up from the hit.

Your first thought when a player doesn’t rise from a hit is that maybe he got the wind knocked out of him, or was knocked woozy and needed a moment to come to. Sometimes, a leg injury will keep a player down, but he’s usually moving. Tolbert wasn’t moving.

We found out later he wasn’t breathing. He was tended to by the North Little Rock trainer, Kathy Burris, and revived on the field by paramedics on the scene, then rushed to North Little Rock’s Baptist Memorial Medical Center.

Coach John Narkinsky and players waited most of the night at the hospital. Emergency surgery stabilized Tolbert, but nothing could be done to erase the damage of the neck fracture, which left him a quadriplegic and requiring a breathing apparatus. A benefit would be held to help raise funds to buy Kenyana’s family the right size house to care for him, and he would be confined to a wheelchair the rest of his life.

The life span for someone suffering such a catastrophic injury isn’t long, even if they manage to get past the first couple of weeks. The muscles atrophy, and there is always the fear of an embolism forming in the extremities and then making its way to the heart or lungs. This in fact happened to Chucky Mullins, the paralyzed Ole Miss player who was the subject of many national stories, and who wouldn’t make it to 22.

Today, Kenyana Tolbert rests in ICU at St. Vincent Infirmary North Medical Center in Sherwood. Last night, an embolism put Tolbert's life in jeopardy, but today Tolbert began responding to tests in the intenstive care unit.

"He's stable today," said his father, Don Tolbert. "His blood pressure dropped last night. We think now it may have been like some kind of infection. He was in shock, a small coma-like situation, but he's stable now. We're just letting nature take its course. He made it through the night and we're just playing things as they come and we'll see over the next 48 hours."

Last night, we're told, as many as 75 friends and family were huddled in the hallway of St. Vincent North outside its ICU. It seemed like deja vu for some who were there in November 1997; Narkinsky was there until 1:30 a.m. this morning, hoping for good news. One of his high school friends was in tears in our office this morning, having heard that Tolbert had not made it. We initially reported here that Tolbert had died, only to be relieved to learn it was not true. (ED. NOTE: We apologize for the earlier incorrect report and any links to it from other sites that misled readers.)

Ten years later, it only shows how much this young man means to so many people.

In a matter of seconds a decade ago, a life with so much promise, and a football career that was going to continue at Oklahoma State the following year, was changed in ways most of us around the North Little Rock program could not imagine.

It changed Narinsky, the coach, a likeable guy who I thought was never the same after that night. He would coach another season for the Wildcats before retiring.

The week before the injury, North Little Rock had not only upset then No. 1 Conway, they had crushed them by three touchdowns, with quarterback Jimmy Beasley and Tolbert among a few who had exceptional performances. The Wildcats, who had been accused for years of underachieving despite having a plethora of good athletes, were the toast of high school football for a week, and an expected easy win over Parkview would lead into what seemed like a sure run through the state playoffs.

The week after Tolbert’s injury, the Wildcats did manage to survive their first-round playoff game, but the season’s end the next week in a home loss to Rogers felt almost anticlimactic. The team had dedicated the rest of their season to Tolbert, and tears could have almost formed a river in the locker room after the last game. The Wildcats’ basketball team also was counting on Kenyana Tolbert to be among its top players too; most of the season spent around Coach Ron Ingram was reflection on Tolbert and the tragedy of his injury.

I’ve never seen an injury on the football field quite like Tolbert’s before or since, a play that looked so harmless for a moment being so life-altering. Many of us, looking to a higher power during those down days, wondered why it had to happen to Kenyana, who not only was a promising athlete but a friendly fellow; a tough, strong sort who would still smile most of the time and seemed to be enjoying every second of life. Why would someone so popular and with great successes still ahead be put in so terrible a predicament?

Tolbert in his public moments and with friends after the accident has never wavered. He continually has thanked people for their help and friendship. He kept living life as best he could. His family has shown immense strength.

Millions of tackles happen on football fields all across America each fall. Several lead to aches and pains, some to surgeries on the knees, arms, hips and shoulders. One little tackle, one brief collision of helmet and thigh pad on an Arkansas field 10 years ago changed a young man’s life, and it changed the rest of us forever.

The next 48 hours are key for Kenyana Tolbert, and for everyone around the young man. God bless him.