University of Tennessee Athletics
Wyatt Crippen: Vol For Life
October 14, 2014 | Football
By Brian Rice KNOXVILLE, Tenn.
UTSports.com
Wyatt Crippen's 10 years have not been so carefree. He has spent much of the last four years in a whirlwind of doctor visits, hospitals and chemotherapy. He knows more about brain tumors than any child ever should, he's fighting his third.
Still, Wyatt has developed that love for a sport, football, and for a team, the Tennessee Volunteers. His health has robbed him of the chance to play football, but he still dreams of being a Vol.
On October 8, he lived that dream.
Wyatt and his family came to the Anderson Training Center to spend an afternoon with the Volunteers. An afternoon where Wyatt could take his mind off of the treatment he had just received at Children's Hospital and just be one of the guys out on the practice field.
"He'll never get to play contact sports, but he got to score a touchdown for the little league Patriots," his father David said as he watched his son bounce around Haslam Field. "He watched a UT game with me that night and said `I want to play for them, I can be their secret weapon.'"
And that is just what he was.
"He is our secret weapon and an inspiration for all of us," head coach Butch Jones said. "He's as tough as anyone and that's what life is, it's all about seeing a smile on a young man's face. We talk to our players all the time about being the person that they think you are. There's so much in life to putting a smile on someone's face."
The smiles were many on Wednesday. The first came when associate director of football operations Keith Pantling greeted Wyatt with his very own Tennessee Football Family t-shirt and led he and his family on a tour of the football offices.
Wyatt told Pantling that he was excited to meet quarterback Justin Worley, his favorite player. Moments later, it was Worley that walked down the steps from the team meeting room with a special gift: A #1 Tennessee jersey with Wyatt's name on the back.
"He's had his fair share of trials and tribulations," Worley said. "It's awesome to have him here supporting us and his family as well to take out of their day and try and forget their struggles a little bit.
"It was awesome to see his face light up when he saw the jersey and for us to provide a little bit of excitement for him."
Players and coaches stopped to talk to Wyatt on the way out to practice, including Jalen Hurd, who was happy to share his number for the day. The assistant coaches battled over what position they wanted him to play, though it was wide receivers coach Zach Azzanni that won over Wyatt with the invitation to try out the JUGS machine.
Jones stopped to send Wyatt into the locker room to gear up for practice. A stop at his own locker inside sent him out to the field with new gloves and wristbands. Though the after effects of the day's treatment kept him on the sidelines for much of practice, he stayed right in the middle of the action with visitors coming by the tent set up for him all throughout the afternoon.
"I've watched my son grow up in hospitals instead of playing sports," David Crippen said. "This means everything, I get to see him experience something of this level."
Each player stopped to talk with Wyatt as they made their way off the practice field, and Jones brought the players around him to present the team's "secret weapon" with a signed game ball.
"It's very important for them to be around our team," Jones said. "That's life, that's giving back to the community. But also it's every individual in our football family understanding that they have a role and a responsibility to this Tennessee family and that it's important to us."
Linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin said Wyatt's visit made an impact on him as large as it did on the boy.
"We realize that we're blessed out here," Reeves-Maybin said. "Sometimes we don't realize the bigger picture things, it's good to have people like him out here. We know we have fans out there going through all sorts of things and we just want to try and make them happy every single day."
And that was what made the biggest impact on Wyatt's family.
"The love, I mean, they acted like they had known Wyatt for years," David Crippen said. "They were so glad to see him and he really got pumped up seeing everybody. I think it picked up his spirits. They tell us to keep his spirits up and that's tough to do after four years of hospitals and needles. But he realizes the battle he's been though and the experiences, he can do anything and be a part of a team, to be a normal kid."
Doctors told his family that it was a miracle the way he was able to recover from the removal of his first tumor. His current tumor is inoperable, but is treatable through his current course of chemotherapy. He will have an evaluation later this year to check the tumor's growth and to determine future courses of treatment.
But for one day, all of that was out of his mind. All that mattered was a big smile that just wouldn't come off of his face. He was a Tennessee Volunteer, and he had the jersey to prove it.
"He'll be wearing it to school tomorrow, I guarantee you," David Crippen said. "And the whole school will know about it."
