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Tank Carder was branded with his nickname when he was a year old, 12 years before his family and friends in Sweeny, about 65 miles south of Houston, learned how apropos Ricky Jr.’s moniker would be.
Carder — a starting linebacker for 10th-ranked TCU, which faces No. 16 Brigham Young tonight at 6:30 — was 13 when he was involved in a horrendous one-car accident in which he was ejected from the back seat and nearly died from numerous injuries: a back broken in two places, a collapsed lung, a punctured diaphragm and internal bleeding. Eyewitnesses to the wreck said Carder instinctively held on to the window frame of a back door of an Isuzu Rodeo as it flipped several times before striking a tree. His quick, athletic self-preservation most likely saved Carder from a head injury, eyewitnesses later told Carder’s parents.Carder finally let go and fell in a ditch when the car came to a stop in the tree. The driver, the teenage sister of Carder’s friend, broke both of her ankles but was out of the hospital in a few days. Carder’s friend escaped the carnage with just a scraped elbow. Carder wasn’t so lucky."That car looked like a crumpled-up piece of aluminum foil," said Marti Carder, Tank’s mother, who arrived on the scene as paramedics tended to her son. He was going in and out of consciousness and struggling to breathe when he told his mother he didn’t want to die."I said 'Tank, pray to God, baby, because it’s in God’s hands now,’ " Marti Carder said. Her son prayed as paramedics carried him to the helicopter waiting to rush him to a trauma center in Houston.The town of Sweeny nervously waited for word that Tank would be OK, but for that first 24 hours it wasn’t clear whether he would make it. "His doctors called him the miracle child because he was so broken," Marti Carder remembers. "The first day we didn’t know if he was going to live. And it was probably a week before we knew he was going to walk again."Blood thinners and a braceTank remembers little of the wreck, or the six-week, morphine-hazed hospital stay in which he was stuck flat on his back. He was on blood thinners for a year and had to wear a body brace that covered his torso for six months after leaving the hospital. The toughest obstacle for Tank, though, was sitting on the sidelines while his friends and teammates played all the sports he loved — basketball, baseball and football. Although he was able to kick as a freshman for Sweeny’s varsity football team, doctors didn’t clear him for contact sports until his sophomore year."I really wanted to get out there and play like my friends," he said. "When they cleared me, it was a relief, like I can get out there now."Before long, Carder was doing it all for Sweeny — running back, quarterback, linebacker and place-kicker — as if making up for lost time."Tank has more determination than anybody I’ve ever met," Marti Carder said. "When Tank wants something, he works hard to get it. He’s got a lot of drive."
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