BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - After part of his left leg was crushed, Calob Leindecker amazed his doctors, family, teammates and others with his ability to remain positive and stay focused on returning to the sport he loved.

Now the senior at Parkview Baptist School has the 2009 High School Football Rudy Award - a $10,000 scholarship given to the nation's most inspirational high school football player.

He was injured in the summer of 2008, as he and teammate Orrin Fontenot tried to pull another friend's vehicle out of the mud on a levee. Leindecker became pinned between the two vehicles.

   
Holder, Calob Leindecker, won the Rudy Award.
Nearly 400 other athletes were nominated for the Rudy Award, named after and presented to Leindecker Feb. 25 by Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, the former Notre Dame player who inspired the movie "Rudy." More than 1.6 million fans cast votes online.

Before the accident, Leindecker said, he was a typical teen - going to classes, training and playing football for the Parkview Eagles. When Parkview defeated Westlake for the 2007 Class 3A title game, Leindecker had an interception and made three or four individual tackles.

"I played football my whole life," Leindecker said. "I was always into sports and athletics."

The following summer, Leindecker stood in between two trucks - one stuck in the mud and the other attached by chains trying to pull it out. He was caught when his friend accidentally put his truck in reverse rather than drive.

"I thought maybe a broken leg," Leindecker said. "I didn't think it was real bad."

Fontenot picked up his friend and took him immediately to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center.

"The fact that Orrin picked him up and took him to the Lake probably saved his life," said Calob's mother, Tressy Leindecker. "If they would have waited for an ambulance, he probably would have bled to death."

Over the next couple of days, trauma surgeon Dr. Kevin Riche tried to save Leindecker's leg. He couldn't restore proper blood flow.

The doctors decided a prosthetic would be better than a leg he couldn't move, Tressy Leindecker said.

Her son spent more than a month in the hospital and endured more than 10 surgeries including the amputation. He had a number of setbacks, including skin rejection of the prosthetic device.

He began physical therapy immediately after the amputation, getting up and getting used to having one leg, his mother said.

She describes the past two years as bittersweet.

When she got the call on her cell phone that her son had been in an accident, the cellular coverage was so poor she thought he could have been killed, she said.

"When I found out it was just a leg, it was a sigh of relief," she said.

To be expected, Calob Leindecker said, he spent the first couple of days following the amputation upset and mad.

Then, he had a chance to speak with other amputees. They included Mike McNaughton, who lost his leg and several fingers in Afghanistan with the National Guard, and Mikey Hains, a former football and baseball standout for West Feliciana High School who lost his right leg in a car wreck.

Both wanted to explain what he could do with a prosthetic. "They told me I could be running full speed again," Leindecker said. "That's probably about the time I decided I would play football again."

Parkview athletic trainer and assistant coach Jay Mayet was with Leindecker through it all.

Once fitted with a prosthetic, Leindecker had to re-learn how to walk on crutches, before eventually jogging and then running, Mayet said. There were so many breakdowns of the skin and adjustments needed, Leindecker's future as a football player was in doubt, Mayet said.

"When we felt like he was well on the road to recovery, he had to get back on crutches for two or three weeks because the skin had broken down," he explained.

Mayet nominated Leindecker for the Rudy Award.

"He never once made an excuse," Mayet said. "It was unbelievable. I've never seen such a positive attitude when faced with this type of adversity. It was definitely humbling and a learning experience from my end."

After months of grueling physical therapy, Leindecker was able to rejoin his teammates on the football field during his senior year jamboree in August 2009.

In that game, Leindecker knelt down with his prosthetic leg to hold the ball for a point-after-touchdown attempt.

Leindecker said he wasn't positive he would play in that game.

"After we got up on the score a little bit, my coach called me out there," he said. "It was amazing to be back on the field.

"I can't really describe how happy I was to be back out there."

Leindecker went on to play in more than half of the games his senior season.

He graduates from high school in May and plans to attend LSU in the fall, majoring in kinesiology, he said.

Off of the football field, he has tried to inspire others. He was asked to speak to students at Teurlings Catholic High School in Lafayette, and spent time with a Parkview first-grader who had open-heart surgery.

"I think the little kids are amazed by his metal leg. They think it's robotic," Tressy Leindecker said. "There are kids who try to wear their hair like Calob."

"We say that God chose Calob to inspire others," she added. "That's given us peace. That's healed us."

Ruettiger started the awards in 2007 for Division I college players. This is the first year that the Rudy Award has been given on the high school level as well as to a college athlete, said Byron Jenson, the awards manager for Trusted Sports, which sponsors the award.

Leindecker "personifies what the award is all about in terms of character, courage and commitment," Jenson said. "Calob is a huge inspiration here for us."

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