In the second quarter of a September game at Baylor, Air Force trainer Erick Kozlowski stopped coach Troy Calhoun on the sideline. Linebacker Grant Uyl had gone down with an injury, and Kozlowski had the unfortunate update. It was a “pretty serious” knee injury. “I said, like, done for a quite a while?” Calhoun said. “He said, ‘Probably done for the season.’” Fast forward three weeks, Koz again updated Calhoun on Uyl. The senior might be ready by the second week of November. Calhoun was taken aback. “Come back? Really come back, practice and play?” Calhoun asked the team’s longtime trainer. “He said, ‘We’re dealing with a rare guy here.’” This isn’t about the physical recovery Uyl underwent in two months. Air Force football, under Calhoun, doesn’t discuss injuries. The diagnosis and treatment are unknown to The Gazette. But they are also irrelevant to the story being told here. Instead, this is a look at the mindset of a young man – backed by a family well-versed in athletics and the unfortunate reality of injuries – who assessed his situation rationally and decided it was worth giving all he had to return. The team was spiraling. He already had accomplished his personal goals. His pilot training slot was already secured. But he wanted to finish strong. This is Uyl’s story. But it’s probably emblematic of the 2024 Falcons, a team that has similarly picked itself off the canvas and is in the midst of a memorable finish. *** Grant Uyl sent a text to his parents from the locker room at Baylor. “Well, if this is it,” he wrote. “It’s been a heck of a journey.” Grant, the middle of Marcy and Mark Uyl’s three children, had helped DeWitt High School in Grand Rapids, Mich., to its only football championship as a senior. He was accepted to the Naval Academy, but had fallen in love with Air Force on a Junior Day visit and when that acceptance followed he jumped on it. Then he waited. The Falcons' linebacker room was loaded with upperclassmen like T.D. Blackmon, Alec Mock and Johnathan Youngblood, so the younger players had few opportunities. He entered his senior year having appeared in three games and with no statistics to his credit. That changed in the opener, as Uyl made three tackles, forced and recovered a fumble and notched a quarterback hurry against Merrimack. The next week he made seven stops, including two for loss, against San Jose State. At Baylor, he walked out to the coin toss as a team captain and made three early unassisted stops. But when he left the field, his parents knew something was wrong. Had it been a rolled ankle, Grant would have played through it. Instead, he handed off his helmet and went to the medical tent. After the game, strength and conditioning coach Matt McGettigan and linebackers coach Ken Lamendola – both like father figures or older brothers in Grant’s life, his mother said – walked him out of the locker room and to his awaiting parents. He melted into his mother’s arms. “He was emotional, but he said, you know mom, I have accomplished all of the football goals,” Marcy Uyl said. “I knew he was going to be OK.” Those goals were to win a high school state title. Use football as a means to a free college education. And then become a contributor to that college team. As he faced what, at the time, was believed to be the end, he took comfort in that. His mother, in turn, found comfort in seeing him cope in such a way. “You’re always OK if your kid’s OK,” Marcy Uyl said. *** Marcy and Mark Uyl rerouted their flight to Colorado Springs, rather than returning to Michigan, following Grant’s injury at Baylor. They wanted to meet the doctors and provide support. Turns out, there was a choice to be made. Again, The Gazette isn’t privy to the details, but it sounds like Uyl chose an option that would put off a course of action that would definitively end his season. “As soon as you tell yourself you’re not going to be able to come back, you’re not going to be able to come back,” he said. “So my mindset the whole time is that I’d be able to join the boys back out there on Saturdays.” His parents sought opinions from their vast network of contacts, including sports medical personnel at Michigan State. They were comfortable with the plan that was chosen. And this was from an informed, experienced perspective. Mark and Marcy Uyl were both college athletes. Mark went on to a career as a longtime official – he’s worked College World Series games as an umpire – and is the Michigan High School Athletic Association executive director. Marcy is the varsity girls’ basketball coach at DeWitt High School. They had seen athletes deal with injuries, including those in their household. Grant’s older brother, Jackson, broke his leg playing football as a freshman in high school. Part of the rehab – at his mother’s insistence – was in the pool. Jackson, who grew to 6-foot-4, ended up swimming collegiately for NCAA Division III Hope College. Madi, a three-sport athlete who signed last week to play NCAA Division II basketball at Grand Valley State, had just recovered from an injury when Grant suffered his. This experience, and Grant’s even-keeled outlook on most things, allowed the family to approach the situation level-headed. It helped that all had full confidence in Air Force’s medical and training staff – including Kozlowski, Ernie Sedelmyer and McGettigan – and the institution as a whole that they trusted to keep Grant’s long-term health in mind. “They don’t put a kid in harm’s way,” Marcy Uyl said. “And he said, ‘I’m already going to compete at the next level, I want to be a fighter pilot.’” The decision was made to try to return. “We both had a conversation with him, heart to heart, to make sure he was doing this for him,” Marcy Uyl said. “Not for his dad, not for his mom, not to prove something, but that he believed he could do it and it was the right thing for him and not to please anybody else. “He said, ‘Nope, if I can do it I’m going to do it and I’m going to help this team.’” *** Grant Uyl returned to the field against Army on Nov. 2, making six tackles. He has added three tackles in each of the past two weeks, as Air Force has climbed back from a seven-game losing streak with back-to-back wins. He had 1.5 sacks in a 28-0 shutout of Oregon State last week, adding a stop on fourth down. “All the intangibles,” Calhoun said of what Uyl brings as a player. “Tremendous instincts. Loves to play. Loves contact. Gets it in terms of being part of being something more than just his own shell, his own self. The resiliency. And he made a couple of key plays last week, especially in the open field.” This team, that saw roster inexperience exacerbated by a rash of injuries to Uyl and others, suddenly finds itself as a potential bowl team, should it close with two more wins and certain things play out that calls for 5-7 teams to fill the bowl slate. “It’s awesome to see that we have a lot of guys that will never give up, never quit, no matter how bad circumstances may seem to be,” Uyl said. “It allows you to have a lot of trust in the people who go out on the field next to you on Saturdays.” Uyl’s parents didn’t give up on the season, either. With the exception of the game at New Mexico – a time Grant was able to return home to Michigan – Marcy or Mark, or both, have attended every game. That will obviously continue as the season closes with games at Nevada and San Diego State. “Absolutely, we can’t wait,” Marcy Uyl said. “If he’s going to work this hard and finish this out, we will ride this ride with him, wholeheartedly.” As for Grant, though he remained focused on returning the whole time, he’s too smart to understand that he might have already played his last snap. Getting this new lease – for him, for the team – has helped him savor the final stretch of the season. “It really puts it into perspective that, being a senior, this is it for me and just being able to cherish every day in practice I have, every day in the weight room, and then obviously the games I have left, it has made it a little bit more special,” he said. “Just super thankful. It feels right that we’re starting to play better defense, but we’ve got to string a couple of weeks together and finish this thing out on a high note.”Andy Murray has made the shock decision to coach his long-time rival Novak Djokovic during the Australian Open. Murray – who retired after the summer Olympics at the age of 37 after finally admitting defeat in his battle against his body – will join the Serbian’s team in the off-season and coach him through the opening grand slam of 2025. It will see the Scot surprisingly join forces with the man who was his biggest nemesis during his long career, especially in Australia where he lost to Djokovic in four finals. Murray, who beat Djokovic to win the US Open in 2012 and Wimbledon in 2013, says he wants to help the 24-time grand slam champion achieve his goals. He never liked retirement anyway. 🙌 pic.twitter.com/Ga4UlV2kQW — Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) November 23, 2024 “I’m going to be joining Novak’s team in the off-season, helping him to prepare for the Australian Open, he said. “I’m really excited for it and looking forward to spending time on the same side of the net as Novak for a change, helping him to achieve his goals.” Djokovic, a week younger than his new coach, added: “I am excited to have one of my greatest rivals on the same side of the net, as my coach. “Looking forward to start of the season and competing in Australia alongside Andy with whom I have shared many exceptional moments on the Australian soil.” In posting a teaser about the appointment on social media, Djokovic said: “He never liked retirement anyway.” He then added: “We played each other since we were boys, 25 years of pushing each other to our limits. We had some of the most epic battles in in our sport. They called us gamechangers, risk takers, history makers. “I thought our story may be over. Turns out it has one final chapter. It’s time for one of my toughest opponents to step into my corner. Welcome aboard coach, Andy Murray.” Djokovic beat Murray in the 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 Australian Open finals while also losing in the French Open final in 2016. It was his pursuit of toppling Djokovic at the top of the rankings in 2016 which was a precursor to his 2017 hip injury which derailed Murray’s career. Djokovic, who split with coach Goran Ivanisevic earlier this year, hopes that adding Murray to his team will help him get back to the top of the game as he went through a calendar year without winning a grand slam for the first time since 2017. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz have developed a stranglehold at the top of the men’s game and Djokovic, who has seen Murray, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal all retire in recent years, is still hoping to move clear of the record 24 grand slams he shares with Margaret Court.