Injury leads to Florida high school gridder having leg amputated

A Florida high school football player had to have part of his right leg amputated over the weekend after injuring his knee in a football game Friday night.

The player, 17-year-old senior defensive lineman Leshawn Williams of St. Petersburg's Northeast High School, suffered the initial injury during the first half of his team's 42-30 road win over Clearwater.

"I planted my leg while getting pushed by other player," Williams told TBO.com. "I felt everything crack inside my knee and thigh."

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Williams spent nearly a half hour on the field before being taken to the hospital, about 20 miles away in St. Pete. Once there, doctors discovered a blood clot had developed behind Williams' knee, and early Saturday morning, the 6-foot, 330-pound Williams tweeted that he was unable to move his toes:

Doctors spent the weekend attempting to restore circulation to the lower part of Williams' leg, according to the TBO.com, and performed emergency surgery to help with blood flow because the artery behind Williams' knee was ruptured. Williams had still not regained feeling in his leg as of Sunday evening, though, so the call was made to amputate Williams' leg just above the knee.

"Being that the muscles in lower leg had died the leg had to be removed because the blood was toxic and was starting to move to his kidneys, and he could have died if leg wasn't severed immediately," Northeast coach Jeremy Frioud told TBO.com.

"I don't think he's grasped it all yet," his mother, Bonita Copeland, added in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times. "He's still recovering. We're all still trying to understand it."

An online fundraiser has already collected more than $2,000 in donations for Williams, who will turn 18 on Thursday. Plans are also being put in place for Williams to receive a prosthetic leg from a Florida-based foundation called 50 Legs, which also provided prosthetics to Celeste Corcoran, a double amputee who lost both of her legs in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Williams' team, which plans to wear helmet stickers with Williams' No. 69 for the remainder of the season, is scheduled to play at Tarpon Springs East Lake on Friday night. It's unknown if Williams will be able to attend the game, but he's made it clear that he's still rooting on his brothers on the field.

"This was just freakish, awful luck," Frioud told the Tampa Bay Times. "But we're going to be there as a team to help. ... The first thing (Williams) texted to us after this happened was 'play hard.' That's exactly what we're going to do."