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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-===-