Henry Beaver doesn’t have to look back on the injury that ended his football season.

He gets to look forward to track and field.

Beaver, a senior captain and two-way lineman for Alden-Conger/Glenville-Emmons, was hospitalized for nearly three weeks, the result of a ruptured arachnoid cyst that led to traumatic brain injury. He left the hospital Monday with good news. He’s recovering, said his mother, Shelly.

“Most of his motor skills are intact,” she said. “With the headaches, they had a hard time getting him up and moving. So he’s got a little bit of a balance issue. Other than that, everything else seems to be OK.”

Beaver took on a blocker from Kingsland early in the third quarter of a game Sept. 11 at Alden-Conger High School. The two players went down.

His mom remembers it this way:

“When it happened, he actually stood up after the hit, kind of turned around like toward the sideline and his knees buckled a little bit. … He almost started going the wrong way. That’s when everybody around him knew something wasn’t right. You could tell before he went down something wasn’t right.”

Henry was moved to a practice field by ambulance, then airlifted to Mayo Clinic Hospital, St. Marys Campus in Rochester. He had one surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, but it didn’t help as doctors hoped it would.

A second surgery came a week later, and Beaver has been recovering since.

“[The progress] has been slow but steady,” Henry said. “It is better than it was.”

Shelly Beaver said her family has received support from football teams and communities across southern Minnesota. Henry has received letters, posters and well-wishes from the Alden-Conger/Glenville-Emmons communities as well as rival football teams.

A GoFundMe account that was started to help pay the family’s expenses held $12,253 toward a $14,000 goal as of Wednesday evening.

“We want to thank everyone for that support because it’s been a long couple of weeks,” Shelly Beaver said. “Knowing that we have the football community’s support has been awesome and awe-inspiring for us.”

Football is over for Beaver, but track and field season is in sight. Doctors believe he will be able to compete in shot put and discus, as he has done in the past.

“They said as long as I don’t get hit by a discus, I should be good,” Beaver said.