Hamilton High School has played football since 1914, the same year World War I began.

In the pandemonium that ensued after the Bulldogs clinched their first state championship berth in school history, everyone wanted a piece of star running back Halston Haile. The senior has racked up 2,446 total yards and 28 touchdowns this year by evading defenders. But there was no escaping the media interviews and fans who wanted to shake his hand. 

And while Haile appreciated the congratulations, he kept scanning the crowd like a running back looking for the crease, searching for the one person he needed to see. His father. 

Brian heard from friends that Halston was hollering for him. He could even see his boy taking pictures and hugging teammates. In that moment, he must’ve felt like opposing defenses had all season. He couldn’t close the gap and wrap Halston in a bear hug because the entire town of Hamilton was in a single-file line trying to leave the bleachers from one exit. 

“I couldn’t get out of the stinking stands,” Brian laughs. “It was a bottleneck to get down there, and it took me like 15 minutes.”

When they finally united, father and son didn’t have to talk much. There aren’t words that can sum up what they’ve been through, but Brian gave it his best shot. 

“I cannot believe you’re here,” Brian said. 

Hamilton High School playing its first state championship game in 111 years is not this week’s miracle story. It’s Halston Haile playing in the state championship game, a year removed from a freak football hit lacerating his kidney, in fact, cutting it in two pieces. Last December, Halston was in a hospital using a walker to shuffle down the hallway. On Wednesday night, he’ll play at AT&T Stadium. 

“It’s kind of a cool story that I went from not being able to walk on my own to being able to run over people on the football field,” Halston said.

This is the second year in a row that Hamilton has had its best season in program history. As a junior, Halston was the District 5-2A DI Utility Player of the Year after starring as a running back, wide receiver and linebacker. He even kicked extra points and field goals. If Hamilton’s hands were ever tied behind their backs with a 3rd-and-long, Halston was the Swiss Army Knife that cut the knot.

Needing a spark in the third quarter of the Regional Final against Axtell, Hamilton looked for its most reliable man. Halston ran a five-yard out route. But when he left his feet to reach for the ball, a defender put his shoulder underneath Halston’s ribs. It was a routine play, a tackle seemingly no different from the hundreds Halston had taken that year.  

“On film, it doesn’t look like a terrible hit,” Halston said. “But I never got up from it.” 

Instead, he crawled off the field and lay on the sidelines. The team doctors suspected a rib injury. But Halston couldn’t stand, and nothing on the football field kept him on the ground. That’s when they began worrying it was his spleen leaking blood, creating a race against time, before he lost consciousness and, potentially, his life. 

It took 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive at the small-town 2A football game. Halston didn’t arrive at Baylor Scott & White until two hours after the hit. At 2:30 a.m., the doctors informed his family it wasn’t a spleen injury, but a lacerated kidney. At least, that was the technical term. There wasn’t a word to describe what the MRI showed. 

“My kidney wasn’t just lacerated,” Halston said. “It was in two completely different pieces that were a solid two inches apart from each other.” 

The doctors described it as an injury that’d come from a car crash, not the football field. 

Usually, the doctors would take the kidney out. But because Halston was so young, they first tried everything they could to save it. Halston’s first surgery, to place a stent in the kidney and drain fluid, was scheduled for noon the next day. 

Before the procedure, the lead doctor told Halston that no matter how the surgery went, his football career was finished.

The surgeons were able to get the stent into one half of his kidney, but not all the way through. Over the next five days, they tried almost everything to drain the fluid building up in Halston’s body, which was causing him so much pain.

Halston was in and out of consciousness most of the time, under a constant barrage of pain medication. He watched Hamilton’s state semifinal game from his hospital bed. He doesn’t remember what happened in the loss. But he does recall that night being one of the only times the emotional hurt surpassed the physical.  

“I do remember just lying there, and I couldn’t believe that I wasn’t even able to sit on the sideline,” Halston said.

The other memory, one too strong to be clouded by the medication, was his father keeping watch at his bedside. His stepmom, Steph, would bring them food every day. 

“My dad did not leave the hospital for two weeks,” Halston said. “He stayed there the entire time I was there and never left my side. It was pretty cool.”

That’s not the word choice Brian would use to describe the ordeal. The nights were the hardest for him. During the day, Halston was in a half-slumber. But at night, Halston’s medication breaks lasted long enough that his brain caught up to his body,  and he felt the full effects of the injury. Brian would sit there for hours watching him writhe in pain. In those wee hours of the night, it felt like they were the only two people awake in the world. 

“It felt like I was there a month, but it was only 10 days,” Brian said.

As a last resort, before they removed the kidney, the doctors had a drain tube come out of Halston’s back. The tube allowed enough fluid to drain so Halston could go home, but he had to keep it in for four months. Eventually, the swelling went down enough that the two pieces of the kidney touched, then grew back together. If that sounds unbelievable, it’s because it is. Baylor Scott and White is submitting Halston’s story to a medical journal. 

For months, doctors had monitored Halston’s kidney, waiting to give the call that it had healed. Halston was chomping at the bit for a different doctor’s order: that he could return to the weight room. He’d lost 25 pounds since returning home from the hospital, under strict guidelines not to lift anything heavier than five pounds. Now that it was summer, he needed to cram a full offseason into a couple of months so he could be strong enough for his senior season. 

There was never a doubt in Halston’s mind that he would return to the field. But the decision wasn’t so simple for Brian and his wife, Steph. She still thinks he shouldn’t have played this season. And, honestly, there’s part of Brian that feels that way too. It’s like a clash in his soul between the pride he feels when he watches Halston play football and the helplessness he felt in that hospital room when there wasn’t anything he could do for his boy, except be there. 

It was a complicated decision with no right answer. But there’s a simple reason Brian allowed his son to play this year. 

“I just can’t tell him that he can’t do what he loves,” Brian said.

Halston’s love for football, for competition, is what makes him a special player. Hamilton coach Ryan Marwitz admits Halston isn’t the fastest kid if they all lined up for a track race. But he plays at a different speed than everyone on the football field. That reckless abandon has become his trademark, and no one would’ve blamed him if he lost it after the injury. 

“The most impressive thing, coming off that injury, you think, ‘Man, how aggressive is he going to be?’” Marwitz said. “But from Day One, he played the same way he played before. No fear. At all.”

No opponent before him, whether on Hamilton’s home field in front of hundreds or at AT&T Stadium in front of thousands, is scarier than what he’s already been through. 

“God gave him a second chance,” Brian said. “He could so easily not be playing this year. And, honestly, he could’ve lost his life.”

So no matter what the outcome is on Wednesday night, Brian Haile will find his son and wrap him in a bear hug. Then, Brian will tell Halston he can’t believe he’s here. Maybe that means he can’t believe Hamilton made the state championship since 1914. Or, that Halston’s playing at AT&T Stadium. Or that his boy is able to hug him back. 

Maybe it means all of those things.