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College of Idaho senior runner J.J. Burk was run over by a firetruck. He returned and is a key member of the Coyotes’ cross country team that attempts to lock up a spot in the NAIA national meet when they compete Saturday at the Cascade Conference meet in Springfield, Ore.
Mike Vogt/IPT
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Mike Stetson
mstetson@idahopress.com
Thursday, November 5th, 2009

CALDWELL — The spring and summer of 2006 couldn't have looked brighter for J.J. Burk.

The senior at Bliss High earned valedictorian honors in the classroom, and on the athletic fields he raced his way to second-place finishes in both the 1,600-meters and 3,200-meters at the 2A state track meet.

His performance on the track also secured his college future as College of Idaho track and cross country coach Pat McCurry started recruiting Burk.

"We made our living just on diamonds in the rough here ... these small school kids that we found that nobody else did, and they've been great, and J.J. was another one," McCurry said

Burk signed to run with the Yotes rather than attending school at Gonzaga, where his older brother, Calib, and sister, Mariah, were going to college.

The Yotes "diamond in the rough" truly has proven to be that, in an unexpected way.

Burk battled back from a seemingly insurmountable injury — he broke two vertebrae when he was run over by a firetruck — to be a team leader and one of the top runners on the 11th-ranked C of I men's cross country team.

After helping the Yote men reach the NAIA national meet last fall, the senior turned in the fastest finish for his squad at the season-opening Roger Curran Invitational. Burk will be a key racer as the C of I runs for the Cascade Conference title — and an automatic berth to the NAIA national meet — on Saturday at Springfield, Ore.

Standing between the C of I and an automatic berth to nationals is No. 1-ranked Southern Oregon, along with No. 19 Eastern Oregon and No. 25 Concordia.

"We've got a big challenge ahead of us, but he'll be a big part of it if we do get (to nationals)," McCurry said.

The injury

Burk has plenty of experience overcoming challenges, as his dream summer of 2006 only got better when he landed a dream job fighting forest fires. The Yote runner wanted to be a fireman growing up.

"One of my best friends was already on (a fire crew) and I was hoping I would be also," Burk said. "... When I got there it was like, 'Yeah, this is a good money maker,' that's what everybody had said, it's a good money maker for college students."

Burk started in May, went through training and even got some attention from his crewmates for his running talent.

"There was going to be this competition between different crews of just doing different tasks and I was going to be our runner," Burk said.

It was a perfect summer, until Aug. 4 at a fire near Raft River.

"I was out on a fire and we were in mop-up," Burk said, as he one of the girls on his crew were putting tools away on a fire truck, when "the girl ... saw a lizard, something we don't see all the time and when we do we point it out, and she called me back there to look at it. When I got back there the driver started backing the truck up, having just got the orders over the radio."

The truck bumped into the girl, who bumped into Burk. He pivoted to get out of her way, lost his balance and fell on his back as the truck backed over him.

"I put my legs up to try and push myself to keep from going under the truck but the rear axle came up under my knees and just kinda rolled me up further into a ball," Burk said.

As he was trapped under the truck, still with his backpack on, compressing him even tighter into a ball.

"Then I heard a loud pop," Burk said.

The girl ran and told the driver to stop before it got any worse, but not before Burk had broken two vertebrae in his back. He was rushed by Life Flight helicopter to Twin Falls.

The diagnosis

The news came as a huge shock to Burk's parents, John and Melanie, who were awoke by the phone call and only told there had been an accident.

"It was very traumatic, the thoughts that go through your mind are: is he alive, what is the extent of it?" John Burk said.

As they drove to the hospital, the Burks called family and friends, asking them to pray for their son.

It must have worked, as John Burk recalls, "as we were driving a real peace came over us that everything was going to be OK."

Still unsure what had happened, or the extent of their son's injuries, they all found out quickly. He broke his two vertebrae at the base of his rib cage — the T12 thoracic vertebra and L1 lumbar vertebra.

Burk's dad said his son told him in the hospital, "'I can't feel anything in my legs,' so it was a huge fear."

Burk recalls the surgeon showing the x-ray to him and his father.

"There was just a big black blob on the x-ray and they didn't know what had really happened. They didn't know if I would walk and it made my dad cry, which really touched me."

Burk underwent surgery that night as they fused his vertebrae together using two steal rods on both sides of his spine anchored with bolts into the T11 and L2 vertebra, and also used a bone graph from his hip.

"I actually got up and walked around the next day because I didn't want to be bed ridden or anything and I wanted to make sure I could walk," Burk said.

Four days later Burk left the hospital. The doctors originally were going to give him a walker moved beyond that walking in the hospital soon after his surgery, and Burk went home with a cane.

As well as the operation went, Burk returned to the hospital in September for a second surgery to tighten the bolts in his back, and to add bars across his spine to strength the fused area. He wore a back brace while he was awake from September until January, even in the shower.

An uncertain future

"Three, four weeks after we actually signed him we got the call," McCurry recalls of Burk's accident. "Obviously, first I was worried for his life, he was on Life Flight.

"After that, I drove down the day after he got out of the hospital there and told him and his parents his scholarships were all good. We didn't know if he'd be able to run but we still wanted him to come to College of Idaho and get an education, and we'd stick to our commitments."

Burk said he started running just after Christmas, a comeback that went in stages according to McCurry.

"There was a lot of setbacks, he had a lot of nerve damage and a lot of muscle tissues that had gone away," the Coyotes coach recalls.

Immediately following the accident Burk couldn't lift his left foot for a time, or lift his toes due to some nerve damage, but with time worked through that.

"He'd kind of make gains for a few weeks then he'd have a setback and we'd have to address something else in his physical therapy," McCurry said.

By his sophomore year he was running better, a bit stiffer due to the rods in his back, McCurry said, "but he's back to having that nice boundy, fluid stride that he had. And he's just a great racer."

Burk's parents have watched him compete twice this fall and plan to go to nationals if the Yotes make it that far.

"It's very exciting," John Burk said. "It's really fun to just watch him go out and go and do the things he's doing."

It sounds like there's even more to come, too. Burk said he wants to try and complete an Ironman triathlon when he's done with school, then might give up running for biking or swimming.

As for returning to fire-fighting?

"I got away from it just because it was bad for cross country training but, yeah, I'd love to fight fires again," he said, adding that he might not be able to, though. "It's going to wear out my back carrying the pack and using all the tools."