sport news Virginia running back Mike Hollins describes his return to practice as a ... trends now
Virginia running back Mike Hollins has compared his recovery from a gunshot wound to a 'miracle' after being shot four months ago, describing his return to football as a freeing from all the pain and grief he's experienced since the shooting took the lives of three of his teammates.
Speaking to reporters on a Zoom call for the first time since returning to practice last week, Hollins revealed that his physical recovery was the easiest part of the process though he suffered internal injuries that forced him to undergo surgery and stay in hospital for a week.
Describing practice as 'freedom', the fifth-year classman further told ESPN that 'it's freeing me' and that 'I don't have to think, I just play.'
He also confessed that processing the mental part of the tragedy's outcome, which resulted in the deaths of three other Virginia players - Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler and D'Sean Perry, was by the far the most difficult challenge.
'I expected to recover physically,' Hollins said. 'So it really wasn't on my mind. It was more ''Man, How am I gonna even make it to practice without calling D'Sean? It was more mental.'
Virginia Cavaliers running back Mike Hollins is back in practice, just four months after being shot in the University of Virginia's men football team shooting that killed three other players
Hollins said physically recovering from the incident was easy and that it was more challenging to recover mentally
This combo of undated images provided by University of Virginia Athletics shows, from left, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D'Sean Perry. The three Virginia football players were killed in a shooting in Charlottesville, while returning from a class trip to Washington D.C.
'I always expected to be able to squat what I used to squat, or power clean what I used to power clean, or run as fast as I used to, but it's the things that I couldn't change that bothered me the most.'
The four students were shot in November on the team's charter bus after returning to Charlottesville from Washington D.C., where they had gone to on a field trip. Marlee Morgan, another UVA student, was also shot but lived on.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., a 22-year-old UVA student and former member of the football team who was on the bus, has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Additionally, prosecutors have charged him with two counts of malicious
