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frame. There's just not much meat on it. When he tells you, in mid-February, that he's actually gained 10 pounds over the last month or two, you start to grasp just how serious it was. Keiser downplays all this – what he went through, the extent to which he's still working his way back – because he's not a guy who craves the attention that talking about it brings. In his family, his friends and former teammates, and his faith, Keiser has ample support. He isn't a cau- tionary tale or some feel-good inspirational story, only a young man who was injured – freakishly, yes, and gravely, even if he'd rather not say so himself – and who is fo- cused now on getting better and moving on with his life. Dwelling on the past does him no good at all. * * * It was a Thursday. Ohio State week. Smack in the middle of his senior year. Another practice, another play, another collision. Another split-second moment of violence on the football 6eld, like so many thousands before. "I took a blow to the stomach," Keiser says now. "I thought I got the wind knocked out of me. But a8er a while, I realized it wasn't going away." The medical and training sta7 were there quickly, and Keiser could sense their con- cern. They wasted little time in sending him to Mount Nittany Hospital, where doctors initially diagnosed a broken rib but couldn't con6rm anything else to ex- plain the lingering pain in his abdomen. He couldn't sleep that night, and eventually Keiser's wife, McKenzi, took him back to the ER. Specialists were brought in, and on Friday, the doctors decided to send him to Hershey Medical Center. He can remember the ambulance drive, "but from there I don't remember much at all." "We thought they were just taking him up there for precautionary reasons," says his mom, Cathy. "Next thing we knew he's having emergency surgery." Of the following days, Keiser knows only what doctors and his family have told him: emergency surgery to repair a torn bowel, the freak result of that fractured rib suf- fered on a routine practice play; days under sedation, then additional surgery a8er complications arose. Days turned into weeks, and eventually, Keiser was down to about 160 pounds – more than 40 pounds lighter than he'd been when he last walked o7 the 6eld. "That was hard for me, and it was de6- nitely hard for him," McKenzi Keiser says. "I was trying to prepare him: 'You're skin- ny, you lost a ton of weight.' " He was in the hospital for nearly a month in all, 6nally coming home on Nov. 18 – "My wife's birthday," he says. Doctors told him not to li8 anything heavier than eight pounds. "Even when he came home, we were still worried," his mom says. "I know you're not supposed to worry – we always had the faith and belief he was going to heal – but knowing his personality, because he doesn't complain, we were concerned." Keiser was eager to reconnect with his team. He went to team meetings, doing what he could to encourage his teammates, even as they rallied to support him. Mostly, he took it easy, because he had no choice. "I was so low on energy," he says. "I was really just resting the whole time." He set a goal: to walk out for Senior Day, just 11 days a8er he got out of the hospital. He made it. "I was just happy to be there, to be honest with you," he says. "I was just happy to be back around the guys." Keiser says his wife was "amazing " throughout the process, and McKenzi ac- knowledges that she "basically retrained him back into his normal routine." Slowly, he started regaining weight, and energy. "It was probably the end of December when he really started getting back to normal," she says. "He looked really good at the bowl game; that's when I noticed him starting to gain a little bit of weight back." Still, it's coming slowly. "Some people don't recognize me when they see me," Keiser says. "John Urschel was back in town recently, and he looked at me and said, 'Woah, I didn't realize that was you.' " Moments like these drive Keiser now. "I think it's motivation to get him going," McKenzi says. "He wants to work hard to get back to where he was." Back to where he was. Knowing where he was, and where he came from, Keiser had already traveled an awfully long way. * * * He was one of those kids who was always playing something. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, whatever was in season. And he was good: all-everything at Selins- grove Area High School, the two-way star of his school's 6rst state championship football team, and a standout on the dia- mond who hit nearly .500 and dazzled in center 6eld in his senior year. He turned down lesser o7ers in both sports to walk on at Penn State, eventually earning a scholarship, substantial playing time, a key role as a holder on special teams – and 6nally, coming into his 6nal season, the full-time starting safety job. "He had this dream of playing at Penn State," Cathy Keiser says, "and I remember in high school, telling him, 'Ryan, you need a second choice here.' We knew how hard it was even to be a recruited walk- on, which he was. But he always had that mindset: He sets goals, and he just works extremely hard." His college career over now, Keiser has new goals, and new options. One is fol- lowing in the footsteps of his mother, a phys ed teacher and 6eld hockey coach for three decades in Selinsgrove. "Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to be a phys ed teacher," he says. "I saw my mom do it, I love sports, and I love working with kids." You can see it now, in the East- This story originally appeared on The Football Letter Blog, a publication of the Penn State Alumni Association. For more, visit www.thefootballletter.com or follow on Twitter at @PSUFBLetter

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