A Fighting
Chance
Season-ending injuries in 2012 left
Lo Wood and Austin Collinsworth
with a long uphill battle
to prove they belonged
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Just 10 days before the start of the 2012 season,
Wood ruptured his Achilles tendon, and he has
worked hard to return to full strength, mentally
and physically.
photo by bill panzica
By Dan Murphy
otre Dame's Lo Wood wasn't out
of the woods until he could make
it through the trees. Metaphorical
woods; real trees. Very real trees.
There's a line of them in a park in
Apopka, Fla., where Lo Wood Sr. brings
all the cornerbacks and wide receivers
he trains from that talent-drenched region of the Sunshine State. The trees
get increasingly closer together as the
players slalom through the line from
one end to the other. The idea is to work
on making sharp cuts, normally a drill
done by slicing between orange cones
or maybe a blocking pad. The trees are
less forgiving.
This isn't the kind of gauntlet to begin
if you're not confident in your ability
to turn on a dime. So when the elder
Wood watched his son stick his foot in
the ground, gather himself and explode
in the opposite direction in one fluid
motion while he carved his way through
the Apopka trees, he was confident the
