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Video: Matthew Geer (Daniel) and Laura Miller (Mann) run the game ball on the field
2012 Shrine Bowl Run photo gallery - subscription content
CLEMSON – In one sense, the Geer family will have come full circle by the time son Matthew hands the game ball to the referee next weekend, prior to the start of the annual Shrine Bowl football game in Spartanburg.
Looked at another way, however, Saturday’s event is simply another chapter in what has been a series of impressive running, and personal, achievements for the Daniel High senior.
2012 Shrine Bowl Runners: Do you want to write a journal about the experience from the run? Contact John at jolson@milesplit.us for more details.
“I am grateful to all of the people at Shriners Hospital and everything they have done, not only for me, but for all their patients,” Matthew Geer said in a recent email to scrunners.com. He, his mother, Shelly and father, Dave, agree they owe more than they can give to Shriners.
According to Shelly Geer, when their son was born he had an abnormal growth plate at his metatarsal bone and the big toe on his right foot bas deformed, “with an extra digit extending to the side of his foot and not beside his other toes.”
Shelly said their pediatrician referred them to Shriners Hospital “mainly because he didn’t have any experience with a toe like Matthew’s” and the doctors at Shriners were specialists in pediatric orthopedics.
The doctors at Shriners gave the Geers two choices; either try to rebuild the toe through multiple surgeries with the risk that the new toe would lackflexibility, or they could simply cut off the deformed toe.
“This seemed the better option because it was just one surgery,” Shelly Geer said, and the infant “wouldn’t miss what he never had.”
The couple chose the second option, which the surgeons performed when Matthew was 13 months old. His foot was in a cast for four weeks, Shelly said, and a month after that he was walking.
“He did great. He adjusted because he was so young,” Shelly said.
For Matthew, not having the full complement of toes on his right foot didn’t prevent him from doing what he wanted to do, including running. Matthew joined the Daniel cross-country team as a seventh-grader at R.C. Edwards Middle, motivated in part by his father, who starred in cross-country and track at Clemson and has had a highly successful road-racing career. He was still receiving periodic checkups at Shriners, and when they learned that he was competing in cross-country the hospital fit him with an insert into his right shoe.
“It gave me a lot more support and allowed me to compensate for the lack of the big toe,” he said. “Having that insert greatly helped, allowing me to get more push off from my right foot.”
Matthew said he has learned to run without shoe inserts for the past several years. He said he’s pleased with his cross-country performance this season, which included a PR of 16:08 at state in the 5,000, placing him eighth in the event.
Dorman High’s Jerry Kimbrell, who is coaching the Shrine Bowl Run team, said Matthew was one of the seniors that applied for Shrine Bowl Run consideration. Kimbrell said he and the assistant coaches made their selections based on the fastest times at state.
“Matt had a very good day and was selected for the team,” Kimbrell said.
The coach said he has worked closely with last year’s SBR coach, Riverside’s Eric Cummings, in mapping the route for the run and assigning runners for each of the 19 legs. The run starts at Shriners Hospital in Greenville and ends roughly 33 miles later at Gibbs Stadium on the Wofford College campus in Spartanburg.
“The Shriners Hospital works with local law enforcement to make sure we have an escort for the run,” Kimbrell said, and the hospital provides a bus and personal vehicles to get the runners to the different locations on the run route.
The runners also will get a tour of the hospital the morning of the run, an event that’s likely to be an emotional one for one “Shriners Kid” and his family.
“I truly am so grateful to (Shriners Hospital) and everything they have done for me,” said Matthew, who will run for Mike Foley and Spartanburg Methodist College beginning next fall. “Without their care I wouldn’t be where I am today. Being able to run in the Shrine Bowl is a great honor and a tremendous privilege, especially when thinking of all the things the doctors and nurses there do for kids like me.”