PLEASANT HILL – Most of the moments immediately following a tragic car accident remain unclear for Ryan Thomas, but her mom recalled one of the initial worries.

“The first thing she asked was, ‘Am I going to be able to run again?’,” Kristi Bryant recalled of the question Ryan would ask from her hospital bed. “It was, ‘What about sprinting? Am I going to be able to run again?’”

Bryant reassured Thomas that “We will get there,” but knew it would be a long and uncertain road to recovery.

Thomas suffered a broken neck that required a halo to keep it as stiff as possible in order to see if the scar tissue would hold. Her pelvis was shattered, requiring three surgeries, and she also broke her clavicle, ribs, and wrist.

“The doctors never really answered me,” Thomas recalled of her questions about ever running again. “Obviously, I asked and had so many questions with the halo on and I felt like they didn’t know and I felt like my physical therapist didn’t know the answer because at the time I was so weak and small, so they didn’t know. They told me ‘You’re gonna have to work for it’ so I worked my butt off and now I am here.”

Thomas is back among the top sprinters in the state as a senior for Pleasant Hill only 16 months after the crash at the intersection of River Road and Beacon Drive when Thomas and four other teens were in Eugene to get a Christmas tree. Thirteen-year old Easton Bounds was killed in the crash while Steven Bounds – Easton’s older brother and Thomas’ boyfriend – suffered serious injuries.

Thomas, who won the Class 3A state title in the 100-meters as a sophomore in 12.49 seconds, missed her junior season, but got back on track last July with the Impact Athletics Track Club in Portland.

“It wasn’t really to necessarily do anything other than to get back in shape and get running,” Thomas said.

Triumphant return

Fast-forward to earlier this month when Thomas returned to Hayward Field for the Oregon Relays and ran 12.30 in the 100 and 25.65 in the 200, both of which are the fastest in 3A this season.

“My whole body was mangled and now all of a sudden I am first in state in the 100 and 200,” Thomas said. “It was definitely shocking to see how well I was doing, but at the same time I am really competitive and I hate to lose.”

Thomas was at state last year rooting on her teammates and saw Vale’s Clair Johnson win the 3A title in the 100 in 12.59 seconds.

“Just being there, I was thinking I could do that right now, but obviously I couldn’t,” Thomas said. “It was hard being there and I didn’t think it was going to be because I still had another year, but it was.”

Thomas would have been a state-title contender as a freshman, too, after running 12.8 in middle school, but she tore her ACL during the second game of her soccer season. She expected to start for the varsity in basketball as a freshman and compete at state in track, but instead sat out both of those seasons.

The ACL tear made it too risky for Thomas to play soccer or basketball again, putting her full focus on track, until that was interrupted by the accident.

“I knew I was going to run again, but I didn’t know what my potential was going to be or how well I would run, but I definitely wanted to keep doing track,” Thomas said.

Thomas was just starting her indoor season when the car accident occurred, sending her to the hospital for two weeks and leaving her unable to walk. She started out jogging once she was cleared from the neck injury in June.

“The rehab was about putting in the time, lots of nutrition and different healing modalities like red-light therapy,” recalled Bryant, who is an assistant coach for the Billies track team. “A lot goes into it before she was able to get out on the track and move. She has a really good natural form so you could see that was still in there.”

Thomas still feels a weakness in her left side and has heard it can take up to two years to rebuild her muscles.

“If you really pay attention to me running and slow down the video, you can tell my whole left side is not getting as high as my right side and that is from all the injuries,” she said.

Starting early

Thomas, who also played T-ball and flag football growing up, started to separate herself on the track in middle school.

“That’s when I realized I was not average because I was running in the 12s and you don’t see a lot of kids do that, especially at little 3A Pleasant Hill,” she said with a laugh. “After I won state as a sophomore, I got super serious about this.”

Thomas has battled a stress reaction in her foot this spring but plans to seek her second state title at Hayward on May 28-29.

“She’s already faster than she was when she won state, so she is highly motivated,” Pleasant Hill track coach Kevin Smead said. “She’s had a few setbacks during her high school career, but she always finds a way to surprise you.”

Thomas even surprised herself by winning state as a sophomore.

“I was pretty shocked because it was one year after I tore my ACL so it was nice to see that I could do that,” she said. “But obviously I go out there to win and I did, so that was nice.”

Thomas has more goals to chase this year, including another state title. She is aiming to run under 12 seconds and will soon pick a college to compete at next year.

“I definitely treat every day like there is no tomorrow because so many prayers have been answered,” she said. “For me to be back on track and for my boyfriend, Steven, to be up and moving and he played football this year. It is crazy because so many things went down, you’d think we would be in wheelchairs for the rest of our lives.”