FOOTBALL ACROSS MINNESOTA | Week 8
Owen Guertin tousled his hair to show a scar above his left ear. Only a few of his teammates on the Benilde-St. Margaret’s football team know the story behind that scar on his scalp.
“One thing I did like about switching to BSM in seventh grade is, I’m known for who I am and not the person who had a traumatic experience in fourth grade,” he said.
At age 9, Guertin underwent a 17-hour brain surgery to fix a rare condition called arteriovenous malformation (AVM). AVM is an abnormal tangle of blood vessels that can cause a brain bleed.
The first few days after surgery were like starting over. Guertin couldn’t walk without assistance. His vision was blurry. Communicating was hard because he knew the words he wanted to say, but they came out garbled.
An active kid who played multiple sports before surgery, Guertin worked tirelessly in his recovery to make up lost ground, never losing sight of his goal to one day play varsity sports.
And there he was Saturday, nearly eight years later, a senior cornerback making a leaping interception to help Benilde-St. Margaret’s advance to the Section 5 final in Class 4A with a 50-12 victory over DeLaSalle.
“It’s given me and my wife a perspective in terms of winners and losers on the scoreboard,” said Guertin’s dad, Chris. “It’s almost like he’s won before kickoff. He’s won just being out there. I don’t know how often he thinks about the surgery and how far he’s come, but the older I get, the more I think about it.”
