RHS Senior Gets Walter Camp Football Foundation 2024 Inspiration Award

VERNON, CT — Rockville High School football player Nate Palmer has been awarded the 2024 Walter Camp Foundation Inspiration Award.

After earning starting roles his freshman and sophomore season, knee injuries years cut his career on the field short. He did, however, make his share of contributions to the program. Palmer may not have been the biggest and fastest in team drills, but, since the age of 6, he knew how to channel a relentless focus. RHS head coach Erick Knickerbocker noticed that right away.

"He put his heart and soul into every single play," Knickerbocker said.

Palmer had been accumulating impressive statistics as a linebacker in his first two seasons, but on the first play in the first game of his junior year, Palmer tore an anterior cruciate ligament while making a tackle. He was out for the season. Weeks before training camp was to begin his senior season, Palmer tore his ACL again.

Palmer's playing days were essentially over. His post-injury contributions were what impressed the Walter Camp Foundation.

"We were building a team around his energy, his emotion, his leadership," Knickerbocker said. "We made him a captain his junior year."

That was after Palmer considered backing away from football.

"But then I thought about my friends and what the program has done for me. I knew I just couldn’t walk away," he said. "If I can’t play, I’m still going to try and be loud and obnoxious and, overall, just be there for the team."

Palmer volunteered as a coach and worked with the linebackers. He helped Knickerbocker write pregame speeches and was the impetus to get the team going. Occasionally, the often-animated Knickerbocker would get a bit too excited with the game officials and Palmer was there to pull him back to the sideline.

"I thought when Nate got injured, we would lose everything he brought to the table, but I was completely wrong," Knickerbocker said. "Nate found ways to help the team that had nothing to do with his play on the field."

Players even applied eye black Palmer style.

"It’s in his DNA to help people," Knickerbocker said. Writing pregame speeches with Palmer was especially fun and rewarding, he said. They’d meet in his social studies classroom at Rockville High and collaborate, and carefully choose every word.

There was still more for Palmer to do.

Palmer and teammate and friend Amir Muhammad even applied a big picture concept inspired by Muhammad's mom — what would they do when they arrived at college and when football was over? The result was the pair launching an organization called The Fifth Down, which works to help high school athletes deal with the inevitable – the end of their playing days and the next stages of their lives.

"No matter how far you go in sports, it will eventually come to an end, and who are you after it ends?” Palmer said.

Palmer and Muhammad met with fellow athletes at Rockville High School to consider those questions, conduct workshops and discuss mental health. They also hosted a conference with athletes from other high schools.

They have worked to raise money from various foundations to continue the program’s work.

"Fifth Down is a conversation starter for the topic no one wants to discuss because no one wants to talk about the end," Palmer said. "As much as we all know it’s coming, we want to live in the now. Some people really do get stuck."

He continued, "You gain things when you play a sport – that sense of how to lead, how to work with others. You also get to see who you are as a person."

Through his experience so far with The Fifth Down, Palmer has learned that he likes helping others. His plan is to study social work, but also to work with Muhammad to continue and build The Fifth Down.

Knickerbocker said what Palmer and Muhammad have achieved with Fifth Down has made him think differently about coaching and working with young people.

"The injury pushed Nate in a new direction,” Knickerbocker said. “He couldn’t lead with his pads anymore, but there were other important things he could do. It’s opened opportunities he would not have realized he had."

And while he would have preferred not to twice tear his ACL, Palmer said some good has come from it.

"I don’t think I'm doing a lot of the things I’m doing if I don't get injured," Palmer said. "I don’t think I become who I am. As unfortunate as tearing my ACL was, I’m so glad to be the person I am right now."