FSLM Student Profile

Meet Matthew Delaney
By Madeline Smallwood

It is April 29th, 2023. The Texas A&M–Texarkana Eagles baseball team is playing at Spring Lake Park; they’re in the fifth inning. Freshman player Matthew Delaney is excited to have a break from his normal “freshman” gameday responsibilities. “I normally have to ‘write the books,’ which [means to write down] calls, strikes, and outs,” he explained. “It was the one day of the year I didn’t have to write the books.” 

Standing in the left-field bullpen, Matthew throws a football with one of his teammates, and then—

Bang.

He hits the ground.

“I go down, and I can’t feel my legs. Then I see everybody rushing towards me, and I’m thinking—that wasn’t a baseball. I hear gunshots, and I think, ‘Okay, I probably got shot,’” Matthew recalled.

The stray bullet, shot from a nearby neighborhood, traveled over 400 yards and struck Matthew in the back.

Matthew was immediately rushed to the ER and underwent emergency surgery, which included a chest tube. “At first, I was told I was completely paralyzed, and then later only partially, so there was hope I would be able to walk and do a lot of things,” he said.

Luckily, Matthew had a very involved support system, from his family in Princeton, Texas, to his teammates and coaches in Texarkana. “My family, my girlfriend, and every single one of the team and coaches—they helped me a lot,” he reflected. “I would say that I’m a super positive guy. I look at the glass half-full all the time. I have a great family, great friends, so they all helped me throughout everything. But I’ll be honest, I just kept strong because I knew if I got down, my mom would get even worse. So I just stayed strong,” Matthew admitted.

This testament of perseverance has taught Matthew many things. “I realized that you can’t have regrets because you never know what will happen,” he said. “You never know what God’s going to show you. I think God put me through this because I was drinking a little too much and didn’t have all my priorities straight. It was just his way to put me back on track.”

Although Matthew has a self-proclaimed positive outlook on life, he has experienced his fair share of disappointment throughout this journey. “Just being unable to walk for the first month was very frustrating. I could move my right toes and slowly my left, and then I could feel my knees. Not being able to do the stuff I used to was just hard,” he said.

This freak accident still affects Matthew today and will for the rest of his life. “I can kind of laugh at the situation now, so there’s nothing mentally wrong, but physically, I have hip and back problems now. I have constant hip and back pain, which I’m not sure will ever go away,” he said. “I can’t do all the athletic, cool things just yet—I’m still working on it—but I’m able to walk and jog now, which is good.”

As Matthew continues the hard work of recovery, he wastes no time on “what if”s or self-pity. Instead, he strives to grow and learn from the event.

“Just because something happened to you doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it,” he said. “Don’t look at [the experience] in a bad way. Look at it like this: ‘Alright, I’m stuck with this [hardship], but now I want to get to this [outcome]. Set goals. Asking myself what I wanted to do in life really helped me. I told myself every day that I would walk again, no matter what it took.”

Matthew is diligently working on his studies with plans to graduate as scheduled and get back to sports.