KELSO — Less than 48 hours from Kelso High’s playoff football game last November, Steve Amrine’s thoughts couldn’t be further away from the sport he’s coached for three decades while sitting in a Portland restaurant eating breakfast with his wife, Jaime.
They were steps from Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel, trying to keep their minds occupied while waiting for updates on Kelso’s all-league quarterback.
The quarterback — their only son, Tucker — chose to have a four-and-a-half-hour surgery, followed by months of physical therapy and rehabilitation so he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life wearing a compression sleeve and taking blood thinners daily.
Two weeks earlier, a blood clot near the collarbone caused the teenager’s sudden discomfort and discoloration in his right shoulder and forearm. The clot got so large, blood spilled into both lungs.
He also chose the surgery, so he could play his final season of high school football.
Some 11 months after that Nov. 2, 2023, surgery, Steve Amrine gets emotional when talking about his son while perched up in Schroeder Field’s grandstands on a recent Monday.
For a man who’s spent 32 years coaching football — 16 at different college stops and another 16 at the high school level — his son’s future in life after football is why the coach wiped away tears. But so, too, is the sport Tucker Amrine’s been around his entire life for why the coach counts the family’s blessings.
“You never want your kid not to be able to have dreams,” Coach Amrine said, “and do what they want to do. … To be able to get to do this and watch the impact he has on other kids.
“You don’t take this stuff for granted anymore.”
Kelso (3-1) opens 3A Greater St. Helens League play at 7 p.m. Friday against Evergreen (3-1) at McKenzie Stadium. Although it’s the league opener for both teams, the game is expected to have league-title implications.
“I think they respect us and we respect them,” the younger Amrine said. “It’s always a super high-level game. That’s what I look forward to the most.”
Diagnosis & recovery
At a packed Schroeder Field at Ed Laulainen Stadium for last month’s season-opener, Kelso topped Mark Morris, 44-12, behind Tucker Amrine’s 113 yards passing and a touchdown. It was his first game since a 35-34 overtime loss to Mountain View last October.
Details of events nearly one year ago remain as clear today to the quarterback as it did then. That entire week leading up to hosting Mountain View and in the days afterward, Amrine experienced arm pain, heart palpitations, and at times, difficulty catching his breath. His right forearm ballooned in size, turned blue and purple and had Amrine joking he looked like a zombie. It caused concern for Grace Middlestadt, the school’s athletic trainer and TJ Ablan, Kelso’s former trainer and a family friend, when Amrine sought out their opinions.
Within hours, Tucker Amrine went from a typical Tuesday football practice, to the emergency room at PeaceHealth St. John Medical Center in Longview, to Randall Children’s intensive care unit.
Amrine was diagnosed with Paget-Schroetter Syndrome, a rare condition that causes compression of the subclavian vein between the first rib and clavicle. According to the National Institutes of Health, it affects 1-2 per 100,000 individuals annually, more commonly found in younger males, and classically reported in athletes with a history of repetitive overhead movements.
After two procedures to clear the blood clot and a lengthy surgery to remove the first rib on the right side, Tucker Amrine calls lying immobilized in his hospital room the weakest moment of his then-17 years of life. He’s grateful for it, though, because something powerful came next, he said.
“It definitely strengthened my faith,” he said. “The weakest moment in my life is when I felt the strongest. I could feel His presence as being a believer in Christ. I actually felt Him lift me up and there was a sense I was going to be OK. It was something that I’ve never felt before.”
Surgery was a success. Weeks later, Amrine got the all-clear, but returning to play football as the starting quarterback of a Class 3A team was a different matter.
Seven months of physical therapy twice per week ensued. Body-weight exercises started in January. Weightlifting resumed in March. The choice of surgery meant missing basketball season, and in track and field, he traded throwing events for the grueling 400 meters. Physical therapy ended in late May — just in time for spring ball to begin.
Future remains bright
Nothing has changed mechanically with Amrine’s delivery throwing a football, but he added, “sometimes, I feel like I have a little more zip (on the ball) on good days.” He completed a season-high 12 of 16 passes in Kelso’s 27-24 loss at Bellarmine Prep on Sept. 27.
What is different is Amrine’s appreciation for what high school sports is all about. He plays with more emotion and now finds joy in what’s difficult.
“I realize that hard things are fun,” he said. “I’d rather be going through something hard that’s making me better than sitting and unable to do something. …
“We are guaranteed nine games, but we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow.”
Tucker Amrine’s dreams of becoming a commercial pilot. He’s eyeing a number of universities with top-tier aviation programs and hopes to make the school’s football team as a student assistant. He already is closing in on 10 flying hours as a student pilot. Kelso High School offers a year-long aviation science course, as part of its career technical and education (CTE) program, for juniors and seniors taught by Cascade Air at the Southwest Washington Regional Airport in Kelso.
Amrine believes quarterback traits translate well to being in an airplane’s cockpit. And the dreams his father and Kelso High’s head football coach hopes to see his son achieve when a life-altering event nearly took football away for good.
“You’re the person they look to in kinds of trouble,” Tucker Amrine said about playing quarterback and being a pilot, “and you take the blame for the good and the bad.”
