No blocking his passion

LAKEWOOD RANCH — As a senior linebacker at Lakewood Ranch High, Zach Benghuzzi knows tackling fundamentals better than most.

Defensive players have to “wrap up” the ball carrier by wrapping their arms around him to make a tackle.

It wasn’t long along when that simple tactic might have seemed impossible for a player whose left forearm carries a surgical scar.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Benghuzzi said about his injury. “I kind of like it now. I think it looks cool. I tell people it’s a shark bite, so I have a good story.”

This particular story began during the 2015 wrestling season when Benghuzzi was a junior.

Prone on the wrestling mat at the Class 2A-Region 3 meet, Benghuzzi peered down at his left forearm that dangled by his side after he injured himself during a match.

As the training staff tried to set his arm in place, Benghuzzi knew his season was over.

It only had been a couple of weeks since he had returned to the mat, after having spent the better part of the season recovering from surgery on his meniscus. He had sustained that injury while wrestling during the summer prior to his junior year.

“I remember the first thing I asked my coach was when I could play again,” Benghuzzi said after he suffered a serious compartment syndrome fracture of the left forearm on the mat that day. “He just looked at me and said ‘We’ll see.’”

However, the injury, similar to the one that kept New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski out for most of an NFL season, was serious.

“It was bad,” Benghuzzi said. “I knew I was going to need to have surgery.”

It was worse than he thought.

Later that night, Benghuzzi’s hand began to swell and the next morning, he was rushed into emergency surgery.

“They were afraid I could lose my arm,” he said.

Dr. Johnny Gibbs of Sarasota Orthopedic Associates performed the three-hour surgery, during which Benghuzzi had 12 screws and two plates inserted into the two bones in his forearm.

Benghuzzi spent three days in the hospital while a pump reduced the swelling on his arm. Once the swelling had subsided, Gibbs used a skin graft to close the incision.

He was told it typically takes up to a year to recover from an injury of that magnitude, a timetable that threatened his senior football season.

“I was worried,” Benghuzzi said. “I didn’t know if I would be able to come back again. I saw my arm and it was pretty bad.”

For the first two weeks after surgery, Benghuzzi couldn’t move his thumb, but eventually his feeling returned and he began physical therapy. He went to physical therapy four days a week while also doing exercises at home.

Three months later, Benghuzzi was back in summer workouts, and on Aug. 21, he returned to the field for Lakewood’s kickoff classic at Riverview. He’s played in all six of Lakewood’s regular season games since.

Benghuzzi initially wasn’t sure how his arm would handle the wear and tear of the season, but after taking a few hits, his apprehension slowly began to subside.

“It was pretty nerve wracking,” says Benghuzzi, who wears a protective sleeve on his arm. “I didn’t know if I would be able to be the same as I was before, but it all came back to me.”

Benghuzzi still has a lot of recovery to do on his arm, which still isn’t as strong as the other, but he doesn’t plan on letting that hinder his play.

“I think everything worked out pretty good,” he said. “I’ve been getting better every day.”

Contact Jen Blanco at [email protected].