Sam Hartwell remembers it like it was yesterday.
Playing a middle school football game during his eighth-grade year at Cedar Creek, Sam took a hit up high while his leg was flexed out.
And although he finished playing the game, Sam found out the following day he had torn the ACL in his right knee.
However, three years and one school later, Ruston High School’s starting quarterback is running around making plays for the No. 2 ranked Bearcats like nothing ever happened.
Sam gives a lot of credit to the folks at Johnson Physical Therapy (JPT).
“Working with JPT and those guys and doing rehab with all of them, they made it fun,” said Sam. “I actually looked forward to physical therapy. I looked forward to going and seeing Mr. Jereme (Johnson) and Mr. Bryan (Moore) and all of those people. I worked with all of them, and they were all great.”
It was in the fall of 2022 when Sam suffered the injury.
“During that time, I was in the middle of making a decision on going to Ruston High the next year or if I wanted to stay at Cedar Creek,” said Sam. “Hurting my knee during that time made that decision more complicated.
“It beat me up a little bit. You want to play with your friends. You want to be out on the field. And especially in middle school, you don’t think you are going to suffer that type of injury. It sucked, but God has a plan for you.”
A big part of that plan was JPT.
Following the ACL repair surgery performed by Dr. Paul Novakavich, Sam began the tedious, emotionally and mentally challenging task of recovery.
“After my surgery, my (knee) was impossible to move,” said Sam. “It was a hard time dealing with it. I think going to JPT, working hard, focusing on getting better … my mentality got better. I could tell I was getting better thanks to the work and the staff pushing me and encouraging me. I knew I was getting better every week. They always gave me positive feedback.”
Jereme, who started JPT in 2017 and now has three sites in Ruston, Monroe and West Monroe, remembers eighth-grade Sam and his rehab.
“Sam had such a poise about him at such a young age,” said Jereme. “It’s cool to see the growth of these kids through the adversity of the injury and rehab. To see them come in, down in the dumps, they have had their (athletic) identity taken away to some respects … it’s such a psychological warfare to go through that.”
According to both Jereme and Sam, the patient had the right mindset as he went through the rehabilitation process.
“You have to attack it with a good attitude,” said Sam, whose older sister Ava also benefited from JPT for a pair of ACL injuries. “If you don’t, you aren’t going to get any better. That was my mentality. I wanted to get back on the field and play. I knew I was going to a bigger school where I wanted to play. Mentally, it was always in the back of my head. ‘What if I’m never the same? What if I can’t do this? What if I can’t do that?’
“I thought they made it so much fun. The workout was always challenging. It was always hard. But they have great people, great equipment and a great facility to help you get through it. I always had fun doing it even if it was hard.”
Jereme said he and his team take great pride in working with people of all ages. He said it’s satisfying to see the recovery of young athletes who may have a lot of doubt when they first start the process.
“You have to get them to appreciate what they can do,” said Jereme. “They doubt their capabilities when they are first starting physical therapy. They don’t really trust the limb to land on or move on. We know the final product and how we are going to get there, but they have no clue. We are on the end of knowing. They are on the end of not knowing nor trusting.”
That knowledge is a key to JPT’s success with its clients, regardless of age or injury.
“We have done this for so long with so many different patients that the vision is very clear to us,” said Jereme. “Everyone comes in with their own setbacks or challenges. But through it all, we have done it so many times that we can see – we know – the path to their recovery. At this point there is nothing that we haven’t seen.
“We see the vision and know the outcome regardless of each individual setback. We know how we want to move forward, and we know how it’s going to play out.”
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