BOULDER — Offering hints of what would become a return-to-glory season for Colorado, the game at Michigan in September began like a dream come true, especially for Derek McCartney. There he was, playing in the stadium where the Buffaloes upset the Wolverines in 1994 on Kordell Stewart’s famous Hail Mary pass to Michael Westbrook. Derek’s grandfather, Bill McCartney, was CU’s coach then. Derek’s father, Shannon Clavelle, played in that game at defensive end.
For a while it looked as if these Buffs might pull off another upset there. McCartney, a junior linebacker, scooped up a fumble forced by blitzing cornerback Chidobe Awuzie and scored from 18 yards out, giving CU a 14-0 lead less than four minutes into the game.
“I saw it,” McCartney said of the loose ball, “and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ I picked it up and just kept running. I stumbled like the whole way, but I got there eventually. It was super exciting.”
Then the day turned to nightmare for him and his team. Midway through the second quarter, McCartney suffered a season-ending ACL injury in his right knee. Soon after that, two of his roommates went down. Quarterback Sefo Liufau would miss the rest of that game and three more with a sprained ankle, and place-kicker Diego Garcia was lost for the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon. Michigan led 31-28 when Liufau left in the third quarter and won 45-28.
“The crazy thing about it is, all three of those guys are roommates,” CU coach Mike MacIntyre recalled last week. “I was like, ‘Nobody’s living in that house anymore.’ ”
Wins great, but “bittersweet”
McCartney has spent the rest of the season watching his teammates celebrate victory after victory in a season of redemption. After 10 consecutive losing seasons the Buffs are 9-2, ranked 12th in the country.
“It’s been difficult,” said Derek’s mother, Kristy McCartney. “It’s been painful, watching him suffer, watching his team do so great and he’s not a part of it.”
A week after the Michigan game, Derek and his mom watched the telecast of CU’s upset win at Oregon together.
“It was bittersweet,” Kristy said. “Everyone in the house was excited, jumping up and down. It was fun, and yet at the same time, him and Diego are sitting there like, ‘Wow, I wish I was there.’ ”
Derek is thrilled the program finally turned the corner and is “super proud” of his teammates, but watching on TV or in the stands at Folsom Field has been hard. Faith, which runs strong in the family, comforts him.
“There’s tough times in life,” Derek said. “Whenever that happens I look to Jesus and look to my family and look to my friends for encouragement, knowing that itap going to be all right. I know there’s a deeper plan behind everything, even though I don’t understand it right now. It helps me be optimistic because I know there’s hope. I get my hope from Jesus.”
That doesn’t make the pain go away, it just makes it easier to bear.
“Itap not through good times when everything goes right that we show who we really are, itap through bad times,” Kristy said. “As we’re tested, we find out who we really are, thatap what Derek’s doing right now. Who he really is, he is a man who loves the Lord and he puts that first in his life. Even though difficult things happen, thatap where he can turn, so when he is down and he is depressed and he is feeling left out, he has somewhere to go where a lot of other people don’t.”
Grandpa is proud
Bill McCartney was at the Michigan game when Derek was hurt. At age 76 he still talks like a football coach, but he’s proud of Derek for things beyond football. Derek graduated last spring and is in his first semester of graduate school hoping one day to become a doctor.
“Ever since he was little you could see he was a shooting star, a dynamo,” Bill McCartney said last week. “He’s humble, talented, studies. He doesn’t wing it, he’s very conscientious. In football when you have a setback like this, you can take adversity and turn it into good fortune. It can be a springboard into next year. I expect him to come back strong, have a great year, and I think the Buffs are going to be really good next year.”
Derek’s injury isn’t the only source of sadness in the family. In recent years they noticed Bill’s memory was deteriorating, and in August they announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“He’s doing well,” Kristy said. “I think he’s confronted with the reality of his situation from time to time, and that is painful. But again – this is where Derek learned it – he has somewhere to turn. When he gets depressed, he turns to the Lord, he prays, he reads the Bible. That brings him comfort, and that brings him joy. He’s all there (coherent), all the time. He just doesn’t remember certain things. Itap only memory that he’s losing. He’s completely engaged every time I see him.”
Derek will have to wait several years to become a doctor, but he already is a life-saver. Last spring he donated peripheral stem cells from his blood after being identified through screening as a match for a cancer patient who needed a transplant to survive. Last week Derek was one of 12 Division I players named to the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team for his humanitarian efforts. Recently he received a letter from the anonymous transplant recipient, who is now cancer free.
“Itap an answer to prayer that someone was helped like this,” Derek said. “I got the chills when I was reading it. It was really a blessing to see how it helped somebody else.”
The Good Works Team players will be recognized in a ceremony at the Sugar Bowl. McCartney will be there, unless the Buffs are playing in their first bowl game since 2007 that day. Next year he will return for his senior year, hoping to play well enough to get a shot in the NFL. But beyond that, he longs to be a doctor.
“Itap just been a passion of mine, growing up,” Derek said. “Itap crazy how the passion has stayed this whole time. A lot of times you hear about people who want to do things when they’re little because they’re like, ‘That would be cool.’ Then they grow up and realize itap not realistic. For me, my passion is still realistic. Itap still passion for me. Thatap why I still pursue it.”