Surgery sidelines recent Hays grad Feldt at North Texas

[Harry]

When Boone Feldt gets a stinger, it starts as a burning sensation in his shoulder and shoots down his arm, into his hand.

“Then it all goes kind of numb,” said Feldt, a top recruit at the University of North Texas and the middle son of Hays Rebels head football coach Blake Feldt. “It’s been a recurring problem since my sophomore year.”

Stingers, or burners, are usually caused by pinched nerves in the spine, and they’re fairly common in rough sports like football. But Feldt kept getting them. He played through the pain during his storied varsity career, first at Pilot Point and then at Hays High, becoming the first person ever named to the Class 2A, 3A and 4A All-State football teams.

Through it all, Feldt never missed a game.

Until now.

North Texas’ coaches have decided to redshirt the true freshman so he can undergo surgery to address the condition causing the stingers. The need to operate is especially frustrating, Boone Feldt said, because he already had one procedure that didn’t fix the problem.

“I just had surgery on my spine in February,” he said. “It was supposed to help with the nerves in my shoulder. I got to North Texas and started working out, going through summer school, and on the first day of two-a-days I got a stinger again, which wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Feldt said he’d been practicing with the Mean Green’s second-team offense before the stinger. Now he’ll probably have to wait until spring football to fight for his roster spot. He’ll also have to wait a whole year for the chance to suit up alongside his older brother Cam, a fellow offensive lineman who transferred from Arkansas to North Texas in May.

Read more at the Hays Free Press http://haysfreepress.com/2012/09/05/surgery-sidelines-recent-hays-grad-feldt-at-north-texas/#ixzz25f3MQoCm