Juneau high school soccer teams play to help injured player

A Thunder Mountain soccer player tries to move past two Juneau-Douglas players.
The Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas girls soccer teams dedicated a regular season conference game and fundraiser to Hunter Rathbone, a Thunder Mountain player who is partially paralyzed. (Photo by Quinton Chandler/KTOO)

It’s the second half of an intense game. Dozens of fans are shouting encouragement from the bleachers and sidelines to support the Thunder Mountain Falcons and the Juneau-Douglas High School Crimson Bears.

Each year, Thunder Mountain and Juneau-Douglas’ soccer teams turn one or two games into a cancer awareness fundraiser. The fundraisers started in 2012 and were inspired by Juneau-Douglas soccer player Dorothy Brent, who died from cancer last year.

This year the Falcons and Bears girls teams dedicated the fundraiser to Hunter Rathbone.

“I love my team,” Rathbone said. “It really warms my heart that they would put all that effort … all that together for me … that’s like no words, that’s the coolest thing someone’s ever done for me.”

Rathbone, 16, identifies as a boy. He sits in a wheelchair, wearing sunglasses to protect his eyes. He’s a Falcons player who was hurt in a previous game and has lost most of the feeling in his legs. Speaking after the game, Rathbone said the injury happened while trying to score a goal during a game in Ketchikan.

“There was an opponent next to me … behind me,” Rathbone said. “They accidentally kicked my feet up from underneath me, and it caused me to fall backwards onto my back and then it slammed my head to the ground.”

Hunter Rathbone at the Thunder Mountain High School Turf Field on Wednesday.
Hunter Rathbone at the Thunder Mountain High School Turf Field on Wednesday. (Photo by Quinton Chandler/KTOO)

After the fall, he remembers his coaches helping him back to the bench.

Rathbone had a spinal and head concussion, he said.

“I knew something was off from the beginning because the turf looked white and then I had extreme sensitivity to the light,” he said. “I couldn’t keep my eyes open because it was really bright.”

His legs went numb. His thighs, calves and feet felt like “they were catching on fire.”

Rathbone was flown to a hospital in Seattle. After five days of tests and scans, doctors decided he wasn’t just concussed, he said. The doctors diagnosed him with conversion disorder.

“I could’ve lost my sense of taste, smell and eyesight. Losing your feeling in your legs is the most common,” he said.

At the end of the fundraiser game, the Bears are the clear winners on the field.

But as the Falcons’ coaches give their girls a word of encouragement and send them off for the ritual end-of-game handshake, it’s soon evident the final score isn’t the only measure of a team’s success.

Rathbone said his team played great and he’s proud of them.

His recovery is going to be hard work. He goes to school every day in his wheelchair and is in physical and occupational therapy. It’s exhausting, he said.

“They are telling me that I’m going to get some mobility back … but after standing, some basic movements, after that is basically how hard I work is how far I’m going to make my recovery,” Rathbone said.

He describes himself as an active person and said the thought of getting out of his chair is his biggest motivation.

“To be able to get back on the field, hike, bike, longboard, snowboard … all my activities that I love to do,” he said.

One day he hopes to be back in the Falcon’s huddle.

The fundraiser for Hunter Rathbone raised $1,450, a Falcons soccer coach said.

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