Wagoner’s return to the field this academic year has given him his due. In football, he was selected to the Bay League’s Second Team for his efforts as defensive back — 42 tackles, two interceptions — but he also contributed on the Sea Kings’ offense, scoring three touchdowns while rushing for 405 yards on 51 carries and leading Palos Verdes with 266 yards on returns. “He was never a guy fearful of contact. He had to take a few hits and deliver a few as running back. He was always in the mix of things. It was great to have him back last year,” said Palos Verdes Head Coach Pat Fresch.

And as one of the captains for Palos Verdes’ lacrosse team, Wagoner scored in the Sea Kings’ 14-6 romp over Peninsula Tuesday.

Getting hurt

Wagoner hurt his back while moving some of his grandmother’s furniture. He was putting a table in the back of a pickup truck driven by friend and teammate Ryal Jagd. “I heard a pop and felt a pain and let them know I hurt it pretty bad,” he said. The next day, a friend of the family who is a chiropractor advised Wagoner to go to the hospital to get scanned.

Doctors found three fractured vertebrae, two caused during Wagoner’s sophomore season in JV football and one caused while moving the furniture. He would be in a back brace for seven months, which would ruin any chance of playing junior year football. “It was the most devastating thing I’ve heard, personally,” Wagoner said. It was even more painful that Palos Verdes could have used Wagoner, who was voted the team MVP of his frosh/soph and JV teams. Top starter Sho Funai went down with a leg injury and missed half of the 2006 season on the Sea Kings’ first play of the year.

Wagoner got a number of opinions from doctors. Some said he should never again participate in contact sports and others said he would be OK in time. By the time he got the brace off — seven months later — he had to prepare for lacrosse season.

Another setback

Despite going to a personal trainer four to five times a week for an hour and two months of physical therapy, his comeback to Palos Verdes athletics was derailed by a groin injury he suffered in his first lacrosse game against Loyola on March 4, 2006. He had scored two goals in that game. Wagoner tried to continue playing — he scored two more goals in the Sea Kings’ following game against Downey — but found that the groin injury and his back were just too much for him. He stopped playing a few games into the season, and missed out on the Sea Kings’ run to the Bay League Tournament finals that capped the lacrosse season.

Wagoner went back to the trainer and refocused on football. Football season went well initially, but the pain grew as the season went on. When Palos Verdes began its Bay League portion of the season at Leuzinger, it really began to hurt. “I told my coaches and limited myself in practices,” he said. Fresch, who indicated Wagoner initially was gun-shy in his football comeback before withstanding a few hard hits, said Wagoner used ice and extra stretching. “No one told him to stop playing. He kept pushing,” he said. Jagd noticed Wagoner was still in pain as well. “It slowed him down, but he gave his all. He knew it was the last time he could play football,” he said.

This season in lacrosse, Wagoner said he hasn’t felt any pain. Wagoner doesn’t look like he’s lost a step, said Head Coach Lane Jaffe. “Athletically, you wouldn’t even know he was ever hurt,” Jaffe said, adding his leadership on and off the field made him a natural pick as one of the team’s captains.

Tim Romer, who worked as an assistant coach last season, said Wagoner is an aggressive midfielder who picked up the sport quickly when he started in middle school. “When he first started in the seventh grade, you could tell he was going to be a good player,” said Romer, who helped coach Wagoner and other Sea King players to a middle school championship. “We missed him a lot last year,” Romer added. “This year he’s one of our good middies and one of the core ones. He’s very determined and very physical when he’s on the field. He’s got good stick work and moves that help him on offense, too.”

Jon Spangler, one of Palos Verdes’ top scorers, said Wagoner is also the guy the team looks to when things get physical. He’s often the guy laying out the hits, Spangler added. Maybe it’s the running back getting revenge for all the hits he has taken on the gridiron. “Not a lot of lacrosse players like to hit,” Wagoner said. “I carry that aspect over from football. Football has made me tougher than most of these lacrosse guys.”

Future

Wagoner, a 17-year-old Lunada Bay resident, isn’t out of the woods yet with his back. Standing or sitting for a prolonged period of time brings pain. A decade from now he’ll probably need back surgery.

Wagoner wants to go to USC, UC Santa Barbara or San Diego State next year and major in business. He also wants to continue playing lacrosse, though probably on the club level.
“To be really honest, the field is my home,” he said.

There’s one other thing Wagoner wants to do: play at The Home Depot Center in a proposed lacrosse championship game. “You don’t want to think about it, but it’s in the back of [the team’s] mind. That’s our ultimate goal,” he said.