A Lake Mills, Iowa football player injured Friday in a game against Forest City, Iowa is recovering at St. Marys Hospital in Rochester after undergoing surgery to repair damage to his vertebrae caused by making a tackle.

Tyler Olson, a junior on the Bulldogs football team, was injured when he tried to make a tackle on the game’s opening kickoff. Olson had no feeling in his legs after the hit and was airlifted to the Rochester hospital. There doctors performed surgery to insert a metal plate to replace his C5 vertebrae which became fragmented as a result of the impact. Those fragments put pressure on his spinal cord and doctors need to operate to reduce further damage.

Olson now has movement in his arms and has sensation in his legs, but few motor skills. Doctors will perform surgery again Wednesday to stabilize where the fifth vertebrae was.

Family, friends and community members gathered for a prayer service at Salem Lutheran Church in Lake Mills in honor of Tyler.

“The prayer service was very powerful,” head football coach Bill Byrnes said. “The community is supportive of him and that’s what he needs.”

Olson has had plenty of support from everyone in the community. Teammates have been at his side whenever possible and are leaning on each other for strength.

“He said he’s going to fight as hard as he can to recover,” teammate Jordan Colby said. “We know he will because he’s a strong kid. The whole entire community is praying for him.”

Byrnes and everyone else are hoping for the best.

“All I hope for is he can use those legs,” Byrnes said. “To me the hardest part is looking down the road and saying ‘What will he not have, what will he not be able to do?’ Seventeen years old … that’s just tough to try to deal with.”

All around the high school “T.O. 84” is painted on windows of the school, on cars and anywhere else.

The family is having T-shirts made to support Olson and his family and can be purchased for $10. There is a Tyler Olson page on www.caringbridge.org. His page is http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/tylerolson and there is more information on the site about Tyler.