Army's Thomas Holloway fights back after staph infection

PHILADELPHIA — Missing three games this season with an ankle sprain was hard enough for Army defensive captain Thomas Holloway. Then an elbow rash became something grave, a staph infection (MRSA) that put him in the hospital for five days.

He's raring to go Saturday. It will be Army-Navy, his last college game and a shot to put his setbacks behind him and end Navy's 11-game winning streak in the series.

"It has absolutely broken my heart to miss four of the games this season, especially as a senior and a captain," says Holloway, a 5-11, 196-pounder from Birmingham, Ala., who plays rover, a cross between safety/linebacker. "This is my last chance. It's my opportunity to make that right in my own mind, but more importantly I want to do it for the team."

Army is 3-8. Navy's streak is a record in the series.

Recently in West Point, N.Y., Holloway asked a teammate how he was doing. "He said, 'Ready to change history,'" Holloway says. "It was the first thing that came out of his mouth. I said, 'You know, I really like the way you think.' … For us to turn that around would totally change the season and totally change the perception of this team."

Holloway was a freshman walk-on after getting a Congressional nomination in Alabama.

He started the first six games this season. An ankle sprain at Boston College kept him out of the next three. He returned Nov. 9 and led Army with 11 tackles tackles (eight solos) in a loss to Western Kentucky.

The Monday after the Western Kentucky game, he says his left elbow infection "blew up." It started as a rash he figured was from the sticky residue of a bandage he'd used over a turf burn. Inflammation spread from his elbow to wrist.

"It got really, really big Monday night, and I started to feel sick. … I couldn't really feel my elbow, and I couldn't bend my elbow properly," Holloway says.

He went to Keller Army Community Hospital, where he spent five days with cellulitis (a skin infection) and MRSA (acronym for infection methicillin-resistant staphylococcus, which is resistant to conventional antibiotics).

The infection was drained. He was treated with special antibiotics.

"They had to create a fiberglass splint for my arm to hang it up to help drain it, and they had to cut it open and drain it," he says.

He was released Nov. 29 and missed Army's loss at Hawaii the next day. He was back at practice the next Monday.

Army coach Rich Ellerson says that even though Holloway was a walk-on, coaches knew about him.

"He wasn't recruited in that we didn't have to visit him because we knew he wanted to come to West Point," Ellerson says. "He wasn't a guy that we had to go to the admission committee and say this is a guy we really need, because they really wanted him, too. From Day 1 you could trust him to be trying to do the right thing. It's a shame … he hasn't been able to stay on the field as much as be as productive as he otherwise might have been."

Holloway still leads Army with 59 tackles (32 solos).

After graduation, he has opted for three years of military armor (tanks) followed by a switch to intelligence. Saturday, he wants to beat Navy.

"It's going to leave a good taste in our mouth about Army football," he says. "We're going to love it, and we're going to have pride in that game for the rest of our lives."

"For us to turn that around would totally change the season."