Injury-Free, Stapleton Back to His Best for Curry

It was the fifth game of the 2015 men’s soccer season, the opening of Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) play, and Curry College was a perfect 4-0. Early in the second half against Salve Regina, former Oliver Ames standout and HockomockSports.com Player of the Year Dave Stapleton cut in from the wing.

The Salve defender flew in for a tackle, but missed the ball completely. He did not miss Stapleton.

“I cut into the field and then the kid missed the ball and unfortunately smoked my leg,” Stapleton explained in a phone interview from Curry’s Milton, Mass. campus hours before the Colonels beat Westfield State 3-0, improving to 6-3-1 this season.

“Just imagine someone takes a sledgehammer to your leg,” he recalled. “When it first happened…I’ve never felt anything like it. I was more in shock than anything else. I was thinking, ‘My god, this kid just broke my leg.’ ”

The tackle left Stapleton with a double break in his leg. After starting 17 games as a freshman and the first five games of his sophomore season, he suddenly faced eight months away from the game and away from his teammates.

“When I got back to school, I didn’t really join the team because I couldn’t really move,” Stapleton explained. “I was confined to my room, so I really didn’t get involved. I would go all the home games, but I couldn’t travel with them, couldn’t take part, so it was like I was a regular student just watching the games, which sucked.”

The first few weeks were the worst. Lying on his couch at home with his leg elevated, Stapleton admitted that he started to doubt whether he would ever want to play soccer again. As he started to recover, spending three hours or more per day working with the Curry training staff to improve his range of motion and reduce the swelling, his love for the game was not only renewed but strengthened.

“From that first month to month eight, it’s absolutely crazy how you learn to love the game even more,” he said. After being cleared to return to full contact, Stapleton took part in the annual OA alumni game. He was back on the pitch, making plays and joking with his former teammates and coaches. “It’s crazy; you’re immobile for six, seven, eight months and you go back out there and it’s like, ‘Oh my, this is what it feels like.’ It made me love the game even more.”

Stapleton was full of praise for the Curry trainers, who helped him through the rehab process and who he now sees on a frequent basis. He joked that while he is only 21 years old, he had the body of “someone in their mid-30s” and makes a visit to the trainers’ room before and after every practice or game.

At the start of preseason before his junior year, Stapleton made his return to the practice field, training with his Curry teammates for the first time since the previous September. As could be expected for a player coming off a long-term injury, he was a little rusty and his teammates were a little cautious.

“When you have a teammate break a bone and they first come back, everyone is really timid to go up against you,” he said. “There’s a strange dynamic like they don’t want to break me. After the first week or two of preseason it was back to normal. We didn’t really ever talk about, we just went out there and played.”

Physically, Stapleton said that he was about 50 percent for his junior season, but he also had to adapt mentally. It would be hard not to think about the challenge that led to the injury every time he went to take on a defender. “All last year I was nervous. I didn’t want to go into any tackles,” he recalled.

“That’s pretty much been the biggest thing. I’m pretty fearless this year going into tackles, so with knowing that I’m not going to break it’s a lot easier to play like I did before the injury happened.”

Throughout his recovery, he felt support from the Curry coaches Peter Mendel and new assistant coach Alvaro Amaral, who both coached Stapleton while he was in youth and club soccer. Stapleton played in 16 games last fall, making 10 starts, and scored one goal for the Colonels. “It’s awesome when you know the coaches and they know you and put you in the best spots and can have that dialogue,” Stapleton explained.

Heading into his final season at Curry, Stapleton said, “I’m not back to 100 percent because I’ll probably never be but I’m as close as I’ll ever be.”

Injury-free for the first time in three seasons, Stapleton has started seven games in the Curry midfield this year and has already chipped in with a team-high four assists, including one against Westfield State the day of the interview. He is no longer concerned about his injury, just about closing his collegiate career on a high.

“I’m definitely more relaxed than ever,” he reflected. “You can’t really throw anything at me that I haven’t seen. I’ve just been a lot calmer, more laid back, and it’s helped me play better.”

He had to navigate the transition from high school to the collegiate game. “When you’re in high school,” Stapleton said, “you play against other teams that might have a league all-star or one or two good players but in college everyone’s been a league all-star, everyone’s won some award.”

Once he got used to the speed, he “thrived” off the play at this level. Then he had to navigate a serious injury and months off the field. Now, all that is in the past and Stapleton has his sights set on what Curry can achieve going forward. 


“This year we’ve put the pieces together,” he said. “For my senior year, I really expect us to get a first round home playoff game. In my four years, we’ve never had a home playoff game, so it’d be good for not only us but to build the program.”

The Colonels have already match the win total from last year and with Stapleton back at his best, Curry has the plenty to be excited about this fall.