CHARLOTTE -- Football practices don't start up for a few weeks, but Christian Heinzelman is already excited.

The field at Cuthbertson High School in Union County used to be his domain before being injured. 

  • High school football player Christian Heinzelman tore his ACL. 
  • Off-the-field, he ended up with a 4.2. GPA in the classroom. 
  • He wants to become a nurse and is already a certified nursing assistant. 

“He was a kid that was getting heavily recruited,” said Cuthbertson High School Coach David Johnson.

Heinzelman was a linebacker until the start of this school year.

“I heard a pop and then I went down to the ground -- and that's when I realized I had done something pretty serious to it,” said Heinzelman.

He had torn his ACL.

It was the first game of his senior year, and the year he hoped to secure an athletic scholarship.

“My first thought was, 'Wow that's my whole senior season,’” Heinzelman said. “College coaches stop talking to you once you do that in the first game.”

But Heinzelman isn't one to back down. He used his experience of what happened on the football field and turned his life around. He focused on something else.

"Despite that hurdle, he took that passion and drove it right into the classroom,” said Cuthbertson High School Health Sciences teacher Heather Grant.

Heinzelman was already a good student but his new found time gave him the chance to become even better.

“I decided to take the worth ethic that I learned in football and I just applied it to my academics,” Heinzelman said. “From my first knee injury I think my GPA was a 3.5 and I ended up with a 4.2 this year.”

He wants to become a nurse.​

“Those people have had such a great impact on me that I wanted to do the same for other people,” Heinzelman said.

He's already a certified nursing assistant.

Heinzelman is also mentoring younger students to develop into athletes, and he's working at a nursing home.

“He knows what it's like to have good care, and he's the type of person that me, as a nurse and a teacher, would appreciate caring for me in years to come,” Grant said.

Heinzelman doesn't get to run the field as much today, but you'll notice he doesn't complain.

“He never had the 'poor me' attitude. That says a lot about a 17-year-old, 18-year-old kid,” Johnson said. “He didn't look at it as a negative, he found a way to make it a positive on the field.”

Finding possibilities when others might give up is why Christian Heinzelman is not just a graduating senior, he's an Everyday Hero.

If you have an idea for an Everyday Hero please email Spectrum News at everydayheroes@charter.com