No doubting Dapper's survival skills
When he saw Bryan Dapper in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital, Nick Kamberis worried not whether Dapper would ever play football again but rather if he would live to see the next day.
“It's probably one of the scariest things I've seen in my life,” the Keystone Oaks coach said. “I didn't think he was going to make it.”
Kamberis sounds more convincing these days when talking about Dapper's prospects as an NCAA Division I recruit. The 6-foot-2, 190-pound wide receiver is generating interest from the likes of Kent State and Temple, and others could join them if he has the big senior season the Golden Eagles are expecting.
“He has height, long arms and, most of all, athletic ability,” Kamberis said, noting Dapper's 30-inch vertical leap. “He has super-soft hands. Anything in his frame, he comes down with. Hopefully, we'll get him the ball.”
That Dapper is still playing football, let alone considered a major-college recruit, is a minor miracle when you think of how close he came to dying.
Dapper was penciled in to start at free safety when he suffered a torn meniscus in his right knee prior to his sophomore season. He mistakenly took anti-inflammatory drugs for two months instead of the prescribed 7-10 days, and it slowly ate away the lining of his stomach.
After vomiting blood following a KO basketball game in December 2000, Dapper was admitted to St. Clair Hospital. While undergoing tests, his vital signs dropped, and he was flown by helicopter to Children's.
“It was just a shock,” Dapper said. “I didn't know what was happening to me because no one could figure out what was wrong.”
Turned out, he was bleeding to death.
When his problem was discovered, doctors gave Dapper medication to stop the internal bleeding. In all, he needed seven blood transfusions. He was released on Christmas Eve and cleared to return to basketball practice six days later.
Life quickly returned to normal.
Now, Dapper is expected to become one of the premier receivers in the WPIAL this fall and possibly only the second Division I scholarship recruit from KO in nearly two decades. The other was his brother, Greg, who will be a freshman quarterback at Temple.
“Before my brother went to Temple, no Division I schools came to KO,” said Bryan, who runs the 40-yard dash in 4.5 seconds, bench-presses 245 pounds and squats 355. “Division I schools actually stop by now.”
Despite his stardom on the basketball court, where Bryan averaged a team-high 19 points per game, he knows his future is in football, even if his 2001 numbers — Dapper had 19 catches for 301 yards and four touchdowns — don't indicate it. Greg's first option was Morehead State-bound Dan Vagni, who had 115 receptions for 1,500 yards the past two seasons.
“I always thought football was my sport,” Bryan said, “but I didn't get much of a chance because I was hurt my sophomore year, and Vagni caught most of the passes last year.”
Dapper will be the primary receiver for Keystone Oaks this season, though converted wideout Danny Krchmar will move to quarterback and the Golden Eagles are planning to focus on their running game behind seniors Joe Joe Lamonde and Peter Kaufman.
Dapper's talent, however, will be hard to ignore.
“I can jump well, I have good hands and good size,” Dapper said. “It's going to be hard to cover me because of that.”
It's no longer a question of whether Bryan Dapper is going to make it.
Just a matter of where.
