Bivens returns to sports after football injury

Andrew Towne
Posted 6/3/21

TORRINGTON – With 2:58 remaining in the third quarter of the Class 2A state semifinal championship football game on Friday, Nov. 6, an unusual hush came over Wiseman Field.

The game official closest to Torrington quarterback Beau Bivens was singling to the sidelines for help before the play had even ended.

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Bivens returns to sports after football injury

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TORRINGTON – With 2:58 remaining in the third quarter of the Class 2A state semifinal championship football game on Friday, Nov. 6, an unusual hush came over Wiseman Field.

The game official closest to Torrington quarterback Beau Bivens was signaling to the sidelines for help before the play had even ended.

The called option play went off without an issue, but in the moments after he pitched the ball off to his running back, that was where things went turned for the worst for the junior signal caller.

“As soon as I pitched it off, the defensive end came around and hit me, and my ankle was just stuck in the mud,” Bivens said. “I went over the top of it wrong. I never had a chance to move and go straight, so when I went over the top of it, it snapped.”

As Bivens laid on the field near midfield, you could hear a pin drop all over Wiseman Field.

Strangely enough, Bivens felt no pain.

“I didn’t feel it,” he said, attributing it to the adrenaline rushing through his body. “I didn’t feel anything until I got up to the hospital. I didn’t think it was that bad.”

With a little more than 14 minutes of game time away from returning to the state championship game, Bivens’ main focus was on whether he would be able to continue and play the following week in the state championship as Torrington led Mountain View 31-20 when he went down.

“From the start of the game, I knew we were winning that one,” Bivens said. “I was ready to go play in the state championship.”

He wanted to get back out there to help his team win the school’s first state championship since 1990.

However, Bivens was carted off the field with a dislocated and broken ankle.

“How am I going to be on the field next week? Can we tape this up? Is there an option?”

Those were the questions he was asking the athletic trainer and principal while he laid on the field.

However, it wasn’t meant to be.

Surgery took place on Monday in the days following the game, but the following Saturday, Bivens was on the sidelines on crutches supporting his teammates in the championship game.

It wasn’t long after that when Bivens had found his way back into the weight room to continue getting stronger, working on his upper body strength.

Due to the nature of the injury, Bivens had to sit out the basketball season to allow the healing process to take place.

Now that the ankle is fully healed, his competitive nature took over and he was ready to get back at it.

This spring, a conversation with his older brother Breyden led him to Jirdon Park one afternoon for baseball practice – a sport he hadn’t played in several years.

“I missed it and have always missed it since I stopped playing,” Bivens said. “I was standing there with my brother and he asked, ‘do you want play baseball?’”

The answer was yes.

“That’s the one thing I regret in high school, not going back and playing baseball,” Breyden told Beau, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake.

Bivens also wanted to get back to some sort of competition before football starts in the fall.

In his return to the baseball field in Scottsbluff, Nebraska on May 19, Bivens went 0-for-2 at the plate in the 11-0 loss. A week later, in the doubleheader against Douglas, Bivens reached base six times, going 2-for-2 at the plate with four walks and a run scored. He also struck out two in a brief appearance on the mound for the Tigers.

“I was nervous, but since I’ve trained and trained and trained, I wasn’t thinking a whole lot about my ankle,” Bivens said. “I was more thinking about, do I still have it in me? Do I still have the competitive mind? That was one thing I was afraid of losing after that.”

This summer, Bivens, in addition to baseball, will be working out and preparing for his senior football season. He said there is unfinished business after the team came up short 14-3 to the Lyman Eagles just eight days after his injury.

“We’ll be training harder than we have trained before because we have a team that can get back to state,” Bivens said.