The sun rose on Panther Stadium on Wednesday as Ethan Asher neared the field. Almost one year after the former Powell High School quarterback’s playing career ended, his coaching career began.

Asher watched while his former teammates started their first full practice, and the emotions settled in for the team’s newest assistant coach.

“It was a little hard being out here and seeing all my teammates again and seeing them in pads and me just watching them,” Asher said.

On Aug. 27, 2019, the second day of his senior year at PHS, Asher suffered a torn aorta, massive head trauma, a broken right clavicle, a hairline fracture in his scapula, two fractured ribs, lacerations on his rib cage and a fractured sternum in a truck accident. He was comatose for three weeks before waking up.

During the months of physical therapy and healing upon gaining coherence, Asher found football to be an escape through difficult times, often watching and listening to games and studying stats.

“When I first woke up and everything, talking football felt like I calmed down the most,” Asher said. “It was the most normal thing I was doing up there. Everything else was brand new, and they were hitting me with a bunch of new stuff, and football was the one thing I could talk about without looking for answers.”

Asher slowly recovered in the months following the accident and eventually graduated from PHS with honors.

But right before the ceremony, Asher received some unexpected news: Head coach Chase Kistler wanted Asher to join the staff as a volunteer assistant for the upcoming 2020 season.

“It blew my mind,” Asher said. “I always thought, eventually I’m going to go back and start coaching, but I never thought it would be this quick. I’m so thankful that I get to do this.”

Though taking the field for the Panthers’ first practice wasn’t easy, Asher quickly became fond of his new title.

“When I hear ‘Coach Asher,’ every time I hear that it gives me sudden realization like, ‘holy crap, this is actually what it’s like,’” Asher said. “Every time I hear that, I just go out there and practice with the team and tell the kids what to do. It is cool.”

Valuable addition

Just as returning to the field wasn’t easy for Asher, dropping off Ethan for his first practice as a coach wasn’t easy for his mother, Tiffani.

“It’s hard,” Tiffani said. “It’s really hard to watch. He lost his senior year, and that was really hard.”

From the age of 9, Ethan has been infatuated with football. He started as a youth player, and from the beginning, his parents knew this love for the game would one day develop into a career path, whether that was coaching, recruiting or something else.

Ethan fulfilling this prediction in some fashion has made his return to the field slightly easier for Tiffani and the Asher family.

“I do think that’s a huge part of God’s plan for him,” Tiffani said. “It means the world to us that Kistler and the coaching staff invited him to join for some unfinished business. Just to be able to be back here for one more year.”

While his exact responsibilities have yet to be determined, Ethan will be a vocal and inspirational leader for the team as it looks to build on a 2019 campaign in which the Panthers finished as runners-up in Class 3A.

Along with his experience from playing and watching football, Ethan — now 19 — is well-acquainted with almost the entire Powell roster. And treating them as a coach has actually been one of the strangest adjustments to his new role.

“It’s weird calling them kids,” Ethan said, laughing. “People that are the same age as me.”

Tiffani added, “He talks coach-like, but these are his boys. They defended him on the field, prior to the accident, they defended him during the accident. Everything that went down, this is his family. For him to join them again, he’s going to try his hardest to call them kids and coach them, but these are his boys.”

When Ethan suffered the injury, it was Landon Lengfelder who stepped in as the Panthers’ new signal caller. With Lengfelder behind center in 2019, the Panthers rallied to the state title game, defeating Cody in the state semifinals.

For Lengfelder, having Ethan on the staff is particularly special.

“It means a lot because everything my freshman through junior year, pretty much everything I learned was through him,” Lengfelder said. “I got to watch him from the sidelines and learn from him, so it’s cool that I get to learn from him again.”

Ethan built strong relationships with every coach on the staff during his first three years at PHS. And while he’s significantly younger than the other coaches on staff, Ethan’s opinion still holds significant weight.

“His input is very valuable,” Kistler said. “He was a quarterback for all those years, so it’s coming back to him quicker than most. His knowledge of the secondary and of the quarterbacks is very strong, and he knows his stats.”

Ethan isn’t sure whether coaching is his main dream, but he isn’t ruling it out. It’s a new opportunity to have an impact on the game he loves.

If Ethan does decide to pursue full-time coaching in the future, the position could work as a stepping stone, providing him with valuable knowledge and skills associated with the job.

“I think right now will help my future by learning how to talk to the kids and how to tell them what to do without being upset with the way you’re talking to them,” Ethan said. “Talking to them nicely and how to be a good leader.”

Kistler said, “I hope it gives him an option down the road, an opportunity to find something that he loves to do. I think that he loves the game of football very much that it could be suited for him down the road. If he ever chooses to be a [full-time] coach, he’s going to be very successful.”

Panther Pride

Some of Kistler’s goals for the upcoming season include putting the focus on the athletes and staying healthy amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But most importantly, the 38-year-old coach wants his team to show its “Panther pride” throughout the entire season.

And who better to instill that pride than Ethan?

“Ethan was always the true leader of Panther pride,” Kistler said. “He was a prototypical kid that showed pride in what he did in training and practice. He took pride in everything he did. Having him on staff is another leader for the kids.”

Added Lengfelder, “I think it’s going to help out a lot. Ethan was a part of that Panther pride, and he really respected the program, and so I think that will be really helpful.”

In the months following the accident, Powell — and Wyoming as a whole — rallied around Ethan. People across the county, state and nation sent positive messages to the Asher family and created a #EthanStrong Facebook page to support the injured quarterback.

Even in the midst of a tragedy, the community stood tall.

“I don’t know that you can take our pride away; the Panthers have always risen to anything,” Tiffani said. “I graduated from Powell High School, and we had pride back then.

“I think that pride is something that they try to tear us apart, and they just can’t take it away from us,” she said. “We love each other as a community and we have each other’s back. Once a Panther always a Panther.”

In Ethan’s long fight back, he became a symbol of strength and perseverance. He hopes this fortitude can serve as a reminder to the players to keep fighting, even in their toughest moments.

“I hope that if we’re in a close game and it seems too far out of reach, sometimes they’ll look at the sidelines and look at me,” Ethan said. “And I’ll just let them know nothing is out of reach. You can do whatever.”

Finishing the job

On the drive to practice on Friday, Ethan and Tiffani discussed everything that had gone down in the last year. It gave Ethan a chance to evaluate his life before and after the accident.

When reminiscing about his playing days before the crash, Ethan said to his mother, “If I would’ve known last year what I know today, I would’ve done things differently.”

“They never saw me as someone who slacked off or anything, but I still would’ve tried a little harder just to do what I was doing,” he said. “If someone would’ve told me, ‘Enjoy this while you can cause one day it’s going to be gone,’ it would’ve changed my perspective.”

Even so, Ethan paved the way for this new endeavor by keeping his faith and staying positive through the healing process. Less than a year after his life changed forever, Ethan found a new way to be involved with his favorite sport.

Not even Ethan would have predicted it.

“I think I would’ve laughed if you would’ve told me this is what I’d be doing a year after,” Ethan said. “I would’ve just said, ‘No way.’ It’s just kind of heartwarming to be out here.”

“It’s not a mistake; God knew what he was doing,” Tiffani said. “None of this is shocking to God, and he has had a plan from the beginning. He knew that the accident would happen, and he knew where it would bring Ethan in the process.”

Tiffani added that, “Just to be able to be back here for one more year is special. It’s a great opportunity, and it will be awesome to watch.”

Beyond encouraging his former teammates from the sideline, Ethan hopes to inspire anyone else who has suffered life-changing injuries.

“I just want to be something to let people look at and realize, just because I go through an accident or something tragic happens in my life, doesn’t mean I necessarily have to change everything I’m doing,” Ethan said. “You can still go back and do some of the things that you enjoyed doing before. It just looks different.”

Ethan never had a chance to finish his career behind center; he never even played a down of football his senior year. So the former quarterback is treating his new role like unfinished business.

“It’s kind of like before I hadn’t finished what I started,” Ethan said, “and now I’m here to finish the job.”