LOCAL WRESTLER REFUSES TO TAP OUT

Coty Tweedy is a senior at Madill High School who is a five-star athlete. He is on the wrestling, football and baseball teams. He has been a starter on the football team for the past three years. Sadly, this year will play out a bit different.

On July 10, Coty was involved in a serious one vehicle rollover accident. Tweedy was med flighted to Texoma Medical Center (TMC) in Sherman.

“I think the tread came off my back tire,” Coty said. “There was still air in the tire.”

Losing the tread on his truck caused Coty to crash through a ravine and hit a tree. His truck was wrapped around the tree, making it impossible to get out of the truck. He was pinned for more than two hours.

Tweedy said he knew he was going to be difficult to locate and that led to worrying. “I was worried that no-one was going to find me, or an animal was going to find me first. I was screaming bloody murder,” Coty said.

He said he grabbed a vine and tried to throw it on the road, but it only hit his truck.

Thanks to a phone app and a mother’s instincts, he was located.

“When he didn’t show up at where we were going to meet, I called him twenty-five times,” his mom Melissa Tweedy said.

“I got a bad feeling in my gut, then pinged his phone,” she said.

She has the app Life 360 on her phone and that is what she used to locate Coty.

Tweedy said she would have never located him if she would not used the app. Once she found him, the next task was getting help. “I stood in the road, waving my hands like a madwoman,” she said. “A truck driver stopped to help, then everybody came out of the woodwork.”

It seems there are two things that attribute to Coty surviving the crash. One was his seatbelt; he has a massive bruise from it, but he is alive. The second attribute came from his athleticism and being in shape, his doctor said.

Since the accident, Coty has gone through two surgeries. The first one was an emergency surgery to put a stretcher in his leg to keep his muscles from shriveling up, and the second one was to put a rod in his leg. Coty’s tibia was broken in two places with a compound fracture, and his fibula was broken in half.

Coty’s athletic pediatric doctor Benjamin Wilson said the athlete’s prognosis was good. He should be completely healed within six months.

This news keeps Coty from being able to play football, even though he might be lucky enough to play a game or two at the end of the season. Since wrestling does not begin till the end of November, Coty should be able to wrestle his senior year.

Even though Coty is on the road to recovery, there are still going to be multiple medical bills that he and his family are going to encounter. For anybody wanting to donate, there is an account set up at Landmark Bank. It is under Coty’s name.

There is also a Gofundme account. It can be donated to by going to https://www.gofundme.com/f/1oz3t1rzqo?shar etype=teams&member=2546612&utm_ medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_ campaign=p_na+share-sheet&pc_code=fb_ co_shareflow_a&rcid=8ffc30220c454f19-9c60a85325dd8270&fbclid=IwAR1C2Y7Nr kl6mNCPz2ZqsMgUlGYnzhjwikBlA3RYA AJ_ioRLKfvp8RlfOmg.

There is also a poker run and rodeo being set up for Coty’s benefit. The details for those two fundraisers were not available at press time.

The Madill Record will post updates on these events to our Facebook pages as information is available.