Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – It has been a long road back to the football field for Regina senior Alec Wick.

The recovery and rehabilitation from a dislocated hip that ended Wick’s junior season was so lengthy the standout receiver couldn’t recall the exact moment he was back on a football field.

Regina coach Marv Cook didn’t give a date for when Wick was medically cleared for full activity but the veteran Regina coach knew the exact moment his all-state pass catcher was back to full health.

“I watched him this summer drop a ball put it on a tee and kick a 50-yard field goal without warming up,” Marv Cook said. “I said ‘o.k. he’s ready’.”

Ready is probably an understatement.

The hip injury sustained in a 30-20 quarterfinal win over West Branch on November 8 led to a rare stretch of inactivity for Wick who is also a starter in basketball and one of the best soccer players in the state.

“It was tough to go through it all,” Wick said. “The recovery part of it, it just helps to have a great weight room and a lot of people came to support me and help me. It was a long ride but we got through it.”

The injury was a freak thing Wick says. A rare injury for a high school athlete that occurred after a reception when Wick landed with the weight of two defenders on top of him.

“My leg was just locked up and I didn’t know what to do,” Wick said. “It was just the way I fell plus two bodies going on top of me.”

Wick missed basketball season spending weeks on crutches but was running four months after the injury and planned on playing soccer this spring.

Concerns over the global coronavirus pandemic cancelled spring sports so rather than delaying his return to competition until the fall, Wick improvised going out for baseball where he earned a starting spot in the outfield.

“It was hard, I couldn’t do anything, I missed basketball and the only thing I could look forward to was soccer and that got cancelled,” Wick said. “Not having soccer kind of made me want to do baseball to get out and do something. It was fun, it gave me something to do over the summer.”

After working out any post-injury kinks or concerns on the baseball diamond Wick is ready to prove he is back at the same level that made him one of the most productive receivers in the state last season.

Wick ranked in the top five in the state in both receptions (79) and receiving yards (1,161) during a junior season in which he earned first-team all-state honors in Class 1A.

“We’ve done a few things this summer, trying to get to some camps before we got all shut down and he looked great in June and the first two weeks of camp he looks great,” Marv Cook said. “He’s dynamic out of breaks, he has unbelievable ball skills so you wouldn’t know that anything had happened.”

The 6-foot-1, 180-pound Wick enters his final season with 167 career receptions for 2,254 yards and 18 touchdowns.

So far Wick looks every bit like the receiver that has already put up numbers that rank among the best in program history.

“He looks better than before,” Regina senior quarterback Ashton Cook said. “You can’t even tell that anything happened. He’s explosive. He looks great.”

Wick will be one of the key pieces in a loaded Regina offense led by a three-year starter at quarterback in Cook that should help the Regals compete for a Class A title.

Regina returns its leading rusher in senior Theo Kolie and gets a boost from the return of versatile weapon Nick Wagner, a 6-foot-4, 240-pound tight end/H back that missed the past two years with injury.

“We definitely want to go out and win it and we have a team that we can definitely do that,” Wick said. “It’s just a matter of putting everything together and playing for the guys beside you.”

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