From Sunday's (7/31/94) Wisconsin State Journal:
 
_In a coma, McKersie is battling on_         --by Bill Brophy
 
        It had been such a great year for J.P. McKersie that what happened
Wednesday didn't fit into this local-boy-makes-good tale.
        He was an all-American goaltender.  He had seen his Boston
University team beat the hometown heroes from the University of Wisconsin
in the NCAA hockey tournament and advance to within one game of the
national title game.  And even if the Terriers didn't win the NCAA title,
his team won a gold medal to the U.S. Olympic Festival this month.
        His only bad luck, it seemed, was when someone stole his car a
couple of weeks ago.  That's why he was biking home from Cheers, the Boston
bar where he worked this summer, early Thursday morning, when the real
world interfered tragically with the sports world.  And suddenly people who
admired McKersie's determination on the ice were hoping that the same
quality would help the 21-year-old battle out of a coma.
        Goalies are fearless.  Maybe that's why McKersie wasn't weating a
helmet when his bicycle collided with a car and he went flying through the
air.  Details of the accident were still being pieced together by police,
who have yet to issue a citation, and by McKersie's mother Marie, who flew
from Madison to Boston.  Understandably, she was more concerned with her
son, who sustained a broken wrist, a punctured lung and a compressed skull
fracture.  He is in critical, but stable condition.
        "He is such a great kid that this just tears your heart out," said
Lee Skille, who coached McKersie at Madison West High School.  "But J.P.
has always shown he's a tough kid so you know he's battling."
        Jackie Parker, the BU coach, visited his goalie in Beth Israel
Hospital in Brookline, Mass., Friday.
        "He made a lot of progress in 24 hours," Parker said.  "He's not
fully conscious, but he responded to the touch of some of his teammates and
we got a little smirk out of him.  So it's encouraging."
        There are lots of reasons to pull for J.P. McKersie, whether you
know hockey or not.
        He is the kind of person who returned to Madison after an
all-American season at BU and decided to stop by his old grade school to
say hello to his former teachers at Queen of Peace.  He is the kind of
person secure enough that when asked if he was disappointed in not being
recruited by UW, he eschewed the cheap shot that would have been easy to
give at a Final Four press conference.
        "During my seniot year of high school, the Badgers had a couple of
pretty good goalies," he said last spring.  "One was a guy named Duane
Derksen and the other was a guy named Curtis Joseph.  I didn't think they
had any room for me."
        No alibis.  No rips.  Instead McKersie went out and won 19 games in
his junior year for a team that went further than the Badgers.  His future
looked so bright that all the talks he had with boyhood pals about pro
aspirations might come true with the Dallas Stars.
        "Kerzy was never one to force the discussion," friend Rob Cuccia
said.  "You knew he always had enough confidence that he could play pro
hockey.  He still knows.  Regardless of what condition he's in, one of the
things he's going to want to know is when he's going to get back on the
ice."
        Skille played with Julian Baretta at UW.  He knows good goalies and
he thought McKersie could play pro hockey.
        "He used to tell me he would," Skille said.  "He was very
determined and not in an arrogant way.  That was his goal.  And after the
year he had, it looked like everything was starting to fall for him.
        "We were all so geared up for how far he'll go in hockey, and now
we just want J.P. to return as J.P."
 
-----END OF ARTICLE-----
 
Get well soon, J.P.
 
 
 
 
-===-John R. [log in to unmask] Chem. Dept-===-