Corey Borner was about to miss the bus.

He scrambled around his bedroom with an open backpack, tossing his binders, books, and a sack lunch in. Like a two-minute warning where the offense needs a game-winning drive, there was no margin for error. Corey had the biggest practice of his football career that afternoon – a spring scrimmage that would determine whether or not he made DeSoto’s varsity football team as a sophomore. But he wouldn’t even get a chance if he missed the bus. His dad was already at the law firm. His mom would be late for her shift at Baylor Scott & White Hospital if she had to take him to school.

So Corey took the stairs two at a time, shoved his feet halfway into his shoes, and flung the door open with hardly a goodbye. As he sprinted down the sidewalk, his heart soared once he saw his friends were still at the bus stop.

But it sank once he realized he’d forgotten a textbook.

Charlotte Borner was already heated at how late her son was running, but you could’ve seen the steam coming out of her ears once she heard Corey swinging the front door open and bounding up the stairs. She was a little woman, all of 5-foot-nothing, but as Corey always said: “She don’t play.”

“I know one thing, you better not miss this bus,” Charlotte hollered as she stomped up the stairs. “Because if you miss the bus, I’m not taking you to school.”

Since that morning of May 6, 2009, Charlotte has spent every day wishing Corey had missed that bus. That was the last time she ever saw her son run again.

That afternoon, Corey played some of his best football. After another pass breakup from his cornerback spot, he beat his chest, his teammates crowding around him to slap him on the helmet.

“He was playing hard and having a great scrimmage,” DeSoto head coach Claude Mathis said. “The very play before that, he’d made another great play.”

Corey was supposed to be subbed out. But sensing his momentum – and the coaches noticing – he pleaded with his position coach for one more snap. The offense threw a bubble route to the inside receiver. Corey shed the block, meeting the receiver almost as soon as he caught the ball. This would be the perfect cap to his scrimmage: a hit stick in the backfield. He lowered his head and dove.

Almost as soon as the crown of his helmet lodged into the receiver’s ribs, Corey felt a flash of fire in his neck that blazed down to his toes. It was the worst pain he’d ever experienced in his life. His brain told him to get up, but his body lay listless on the turf. Before the head trainer even reached Corey, Claude Mathis was dialing 911. As the trainers started cutting his jersey, Corey looked at his arm and willed it to move. When he couldn’t, the fear that emanated through his body at the implications of why far surpassed the pain.

“God be with me,” Corey murmured. “God be with me.”

If he’s being honest, Corey felt like God had abandoned him for most of the next year. Because as he prayed in the ambulance ride to the hospital, he convinced himself he’d come back to school the very next day on crutches. But the blurry visions as he came in and out of consciousness following a nine-hour surgery put the new reality of his life into full focus. There was a TV in the corner of the post-op room tuned to Fox4, and Corey saw his name on it: ‘DeSoto High School’s Corey Borner Suffers a Spinal Cord Injury.’ Then he saw his mom and dad talking to the doctors outside his room window. Both were crying. Maybe he was still knocked out from the anesthesia, and this was all a nightmare.

Corey had fractured the C5 and C6 vertebrae in his neck. He was paralyzed from the waist down. When Corey learned the diagnosis, he went from saying ‘God be with me’ to ‘God, why me?’ He felt like his life was over at 16 years old.  He’d never play varsity football, but he’d also never work, go to the bathroom alone, or walk again.

He vented all his frustrations at his situation, at the world, and at God to his mother as she sat by the bedside. But she stopped him after a couple of minutes. He needed to stop acting like this was something that had happened to him and start believing it was a test he had been chosen for.

“In the hospital, he was saying, ‘Mama, why me?’” Charlotte said. “The first thing I told him was, ‘Why not you?’ I said, ‘God don’t make no mistakes.’ I really believe that whatever happens is for a reason, whether it’s good or bad. We don’t plan or dictate our life, but it's already written from the time you were born. God already did that.”

Corey’s hospital room was flooded with visitors and cameras as he became a national story. Texas head coach Mack Brown and NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Tim Brown grabbed most of the headlines. But the people Charlotte Borner remembers most in the hospital are DeSoto head coach Claude Mathis and his staff. On the day of Corey’s injury, Mathis went to the hospital after practice. By the time he left, the parking lot was flooded with daylight from the next morning. That was one of several overnight shifts the staff pulled whenever Corey’s parents needed a short break. Corey remembers them still coaching him, saying he needed to be strong for his mother, helping him drink a protein shake to keep his strength up.

“I don’t have any kids that go to DeSoto, but you can’t say nothing about Coach Mathis,” Charlotte said. “Not around me. It all better be good and positive, because if it’s negative, I’m gonna say something.”

One afternoon, DeSoto athletic director Pam DeBorde came to Corey’s bedside. She asked him how he was going to make it through, unsure of the answer she would give if she were in the situation herself.

“Well, Miss Pam, no matter what trials and tribulations I go through,” Corey said. “No matter how hard life is going to get for me, I want to find a way through it.”

When Corey got out of the hospital, DeBorde had wristbands made in bulk with the No. 24, Corey’s football number, and the words he’d spoken to her on one of the lowest days of his life – Find a Way.

Corey returned to DeSoto High School, refusing homeschool in favor of some sense of normalcy. He wanted to talk to girls and dress nice. But most importantly, he still wanted to be part of the football team. With the help of Mathis, DeBorde, and head athletic trainer Scott Galloway, he attended every practice until he graduated in the Class of 2011.

“If it wouldn’t have been for those three, I don’t think I would’ve got through any of this,” Charlotte said.

After graduation, Corey set out to become a motivational speaker. He took three speech classes at Cedar Valley College, then got his bachelor’s degree at the University of North Texas at Dallas. He shares his story with local elementary schools and high school teams – even giving the North Crowley Panthers a halftime pump-up speech during their Class 6A DI State Championship in 2024. He reaches even more people on Instagram, with nearly 100,000 followers.

But the DeSoto Eagles have always been the community he cares most about. Corey is one of three players to have his number retired by the school, along with former Texas Tech All-American Byron Hanspard Jr. and Super Bowl MVP Von Miller. He attends every DeSoto High School home game, sitting in the end zone next to the goalpost. Corey’s found a calling with his voice, but these games are the rare time he hardly talks. He doesn’t do any coaching, but in the game’s tightest moments, when adversity strikes and DeSoto faces the longest odds, the players can find him at the back of the end zone, a constant reminder of how to respond. Just his presence speaks volumes.

“They know that they have motivation down here; if they just look over and see me,” Corey said.

After all these years, not every player on DeSoto’s roster knows Corey’s entire story. Some of the players weren’t even alive when he was injured. But they know the mentality he represents, and they strive every day to live up to it.

“There’s not one time I’ll see him that I won’t give him a hug,” Mathis said. “It’s one of those things where I’m just glad that he’s here. I’m glad that he’s alive. Because that injury could’ve really destroyed him, and it didn’t.”

Corey Borner is thriving in a life most people wouldn’t be surviving. And that story has been told numerous times. Corey was featured on Good Morning America when he walked across the stage at his UNT Dallas graduation in an Esko Demo Walking Robot. He’s been on Fox4, NBC DFW, and 97.9 The Beat. But he’s never been written about in Dave Campbell’s, a fact he’s hyper-aware of.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Corey told DCTX. “I don’t think I ever did a story with y’all. What took so long, man? I’ve been here for 17 years.”

He’s right. The story you’ve been reading up to this point has been retold, in some variation, since 2009. And it should be. Because even for the messages that are repeated over and over, it’s always someone’s first time.

“I don’t care how many times you get on the news: not everybody watches the news,” said De’Qualis Waites, one of Corey’s childhood friends. “Not everybody listens to a certain radio station. There are still people who need to hear about that ‘Find a Way’ message. It can help them in their life, their relationship, their career path. Whatever they’re doing, we remind them to find a way.”

But Corey believes that everything happens as part of God’s timing, and he assures me there’s a reason DCTX came to speak to him now – even if it is 17 years late. Because his life changed forever – again – two years ago. And he had to find a way through – again. And he couldn’t have done it without the DeSoto community – again.