TAMA – A week before the high school football season began, in South Tama County’s intrasquad scrimmage, running back Jerry Lowe took the football on a routine run play. As it happens so often in a sport like football with bodies flying every which direction, Lowe took a hit to his knee from a helmet in a freak friendly fire accident.

Lowe got up from the hit hobbling, but he didn’t think too much of it. What Lowe didn’t know, and what he wouldn’t find out for a couple weeks, is he suffered a torn ACL from the hit.

“I was running the ball,” Lowe said, “and I was too high, so I got hit in the knee. Helmet to the knee, and I tore my ACL.”

When the season opener rolled around eight days later, the knee was still nagging Lowe, but he was ready to give it a go. The 2014 Class 2A all-state third team back and eventual 2015 Class 2A all-state first team back didn’t start the season opener against Grinnell and when he did enter the game, he only carried the ball five times, but he amassed 120 yards and two touchdowns on just those five touches.

Lowe went on to carry the football 18 times in each of South Tama’s next two games, running for 137 yards and two touchdowns in a 21-0 win over Vinton-Shellsburg and 179 yards and three touchdowns in a 48-0 win over Iowa Falls-Alden. Lowe went on to accumulate 1,633 rushing yards and 25 touchdowns in 11 games with the torn ACL, and has been named the 2015 Marshalltown Times-Republican All-Area Football Player of the Year.

After the third game of the season, when it felt as though the knee wasn’t getting better, Lowe sought local medical attention for the knee injury. He went in for an MRI for a better look into what was causing the discomfort. That’s when it was revealed Lowe’s ACL was in fact torn. Initial reaction was Lowe would be out for the remainder of the season.

“I was like, ‘I’m probably done’ because I tore my ACL,” Lowe said. “I also had a tear in another ligament, and my meniscus, too. So, I thought I was probably done. I still came back. I said, ‘This is my senior year. I’m not going to let it go. I’m going to sacrifice and play.”

Lowe began wrapping and icing the knee. His dad bought Lowe a brace to wear on the knee. Lowe would do physical therapy every Friday before the Trojans had a game, and would do minimal work in practice during the week. His workload of what he could do in practice increased as the season went on, and near the end of it he was doing just about every drill all the other players were doing, but the Trojan coaching staff slowly eased Lowe back to that amount of practice.

“We were just dumbfounded it was the ACL,” said STC head coach Jay Hoskey. “We left it up to him. Most people don’t play with an ACL injury. Talked to a couple physical therapists, and they said in rare cases there are some people that are able to get by, and they can do it. His musculature and strength in his legs, just his overall body strength is phenomenal for a kid that age. It’s just unreal. The joint was so tight and everything was put together so well, he was able to get by, but it did hamper his ability to cut and move laterally.”

What helped take some pressure off of Lowe, mentally and physically, was being on a STC football team so loaded with talent.

The Trojans didn’t allow the opposition to score a point in five of the first six games, and the starting varsity defense didn’t allow point until week nine, the regular season finale. The Trojans won five of their regular season games by at least 30 points. This allowed Lowe to be removed from the field when the game was in hand, and not put more wear and tear on the knee than was needed.

But when Lowe did play, his knee held up just fine, according to his final stats. He ran for 188 yards and three touchdowns against Union Community. Carrying the ball just seven times against South Hardin, Lowe ran for 125 yards and two touchdowns. Lowe found the end zone five times against Roland-Story while rushing for 179 yards.

“I’m glad too, because that gave more time to the young players to get some experience as to how fast the game really is,” Lowe said. “I wish I was able to play every single call on the field because I wanted to run for 3,000 yards this year. Obviously it didn’t work out, but I’m pretty happy where I’m at right now.”

Only once did Lowe carry the football more than 20 times in a game through the first six contests of the season when he took the football 23 times against Union Community. The real test of the knee would come against Williamsburg. The meeting between the Trojans and Raiders was a matchup of top-5 teams with South Tama ranked No. 2 at the time, and Williamsburg ranked No. 4. The Trojans knew there was a chance Lowe would be needed all game. It was just a matter of if the knee would hold up.

Lowe said a week before the game against Williamsburg that he wanted to rush for 200 yards and four touchdowns against the Raiders. While he didn’t find the end zone four times in STC’s 21-7 win, Lowe did make good on his yard total, running for 238 yards while carrying the football a staggering 41 times.

“He liked that big time kind of game,” Hoskey said. “Jerry is the kind of guy the tougher the game, the better he likes it. Most competitors are like that. He gets up for those kind of games.”

Lowe sat out the following week, a 41-0 victory over East Marshall, with a winner take all for the district title game at Aplington-Parkersburg the following week looming.

Lowe broke off a pair of touchdown runs and 133 yards against the Falcons to guide the Trojans to the district title, and an undefeated regular season. Hoskey said if Lowe had been 100 percent healthy all season long, he would have gotten between 50 and 70 more carries on the year.

“It was a fantastic year,” Hoskey said, “but I’m sure he would have run for 2,000 or 2,500 yards if he had been perfectly healthy.”

Lowe then ran for a combined 242 yards and five touchdowns in back-to-back shutout wins for the Trojans against Kuemper Catholic and New Hampton in the first two rounds of the playoffs. He then tacked on 92 yards rushing at No. 1 Albia in the quarterfinals, in a game some dubbed the de facto state championship game. A game in which Albia found a way to win 17-6, ending South Tama’s season with an 11-1 record and a game short of reaching the UNI-Dome.

“They weren’t better than us,” Lowe said. “We just made a couple of mistakes. That’s what cost us the game. We played great. We were a great team, and everybody did a great job.

“I’m going to remember my teammates because ever since last season ended, everybody came together and decided we’re going to work hard and going to come prepared. Our goal was to make it to the Dome.”

Lowe has always been a team-first kind of guy. When he’s asked about his accomplishments on the football field, he’s quick to turn the attention and credit to the players around him, whether it’s his offensive line playing great and making holes happen for him to break off a big run, or crediting the defense for creating a turnover setting the offense up with an optimal situation. Hoskey said Lowe is the kind of guy everyone wants to be around.

“You’re talking about a kid that has a great personality,” Hoskey said. “Humility, I think that’s a big thing. He’s a humble guy. Jokes around, has fun. Has confidence in himself. At the same token he’s not going to say, ‘Look at me, look at me.’ That was evident when his teammates voted him captain last year. Also evident to the whole student body, you know, he was the Homecoming king. Kids at South Tama recognize when kids aren’t authentic and aren’t really good people. They don’t vote them for Homecoming king unless they are.

“Just a kid that has all kind of character traits that you want to see other kids model. The willingness to sacrifice for others, and comes from pretty humble beginnings. He’s got a strong faith. He’s a strong Christian kid, and that helps him in all aspects.”

Lowe had surgery to repair the ACL at the beginning of December, and ultimately would like to play NCAA Division I college football, but he will have to take a detour through the junior college ranks to get there. Lowe said he didn’t grow up around football, soccer was his game. So, despite having to rehab a knee injury, he believes he offers a lot of upside to colleges since he is still learning the game.

“Football helped me learn how to be close to people,” the soft-spoken Lowe said. “You can’t just do something on your own. You’re going to need help. Somebody has to help you do great things.”