Quote:A Great Seminole Warrior

By DOUG CARLSON
Tampa Tribune

Published: Nov 3, 2005

TALLAHASSEE -- Saying goodbye won't be easy for David Castillo. It never was.

On Saturday, he will fight tears when it hits him. He will run onto Bobby Bowden Field for his final game at Doak Campbell Stadium.

No doubt, he'll be forced to play with pain. This time, the hurt will cut deeper than flesh and bone.

"It seems like just yesterday I was moving up here early to start working out with the team, and now it's almost over," Castillo said. "I don't even get to run out of the tunnel anymore since I'm a captain -- I'm already out there. But it's my last time I'll ever get to play at Doak Campbell and it's kind of upsetting."

Castillo isn't the only senior bidding farewell. Tampa's Brodrick Bunkley also will play his final game at Doak Campbell. His first was four years ago, when he led Chamberlain to the Class 5A high school state championship game.

For all the talk about dynamic freshmen on this team, the outgoing class is full of heavy contributors. On the way out, among others: safety Pat Watkins, linebacker A.J. Nicholson, wide receiver Willie Reid, tailback Leon Washington and defensive end Kamerion Wimbley.

They all arrived in Tallahassee long after Castillo.

He bridges eras in FSU football. He's the last remnant of the 2000 team that played for a national title. He figured the Seminoles would play in another BCS title game during his time, but they haven't.

Not for lack of sacrifice on his part, though.

Six years on the team, two medical redshirt seasons, seven surgeries, three years as a starting center. That's Castillo's legacy.

How many injuries? Don't bother asking because he doesn't have an accurate count. Suffice to say there have been enough to make for emotional conversations with his mother and father back in Miami.

They wondered when it would be enough, when he would walk away. Sometimes, they wondered if he would be able to walk away.

"There have been a lot of long nights talking to his mom on the phone," said FSU director of sports medicine Randy Oravetz, who credits Castillo with a dubious school record -- most career visits to the training room.

Castillo told his parents not to worry about his future.

"I love the game, I love this team and I love this university," he said. "I'll deal with what happens to my body when the time comes, but I don't feel that any of my injuries are going to be devastating. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not so painful that it's unbearable."

Castillo didn't suffer for football for lack of other options. He didn't hang around hoping for a pie-in-the-sky dream of striking it rich in the NFL.

"It was his will to play college football," Oravetz said. "He absolutely wants to play all the time. The goal always is to play, to play, to play. ... Some guys would have hung it up."

The future, though, isn't about football. Not playing it, anyway.

Next Up: Medical School
Castillo, with one degree in exercise science and another one on the way in dietetics, is graduating to medical school. He hopes it means becoming one of the first to graduate from the new FSU School of Medicine, which was only a vision when he arrived in Tallahassee. He already has an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship from the National Football Foundation as one of 16 National Scholar Award winners.

In December, he'll fly to New York City for a banquet at which he'll learn if he is this year's winner of the "Draddy Award," considered an academic Heisman for players who excel on the field, in the classroom and in the community.

Castillo took his medical school entrance examination during the middle of two-a-day workouts in August. The timing couldn't have been worse.

He says his scores, which he got back recently, could have been better. So he has enrolled in a prep course to get ready to take the exam again. If you think he won't succeed, you haven't heard his story.

A half-hour after FSU's dramatic Labor Day win against Miami, the team he grew up wanting to play for, Castillo cut the tape from his foot. He stood to walk, felt the pain shoot up his leg and fell to the floor.

For three days he denied the pain, caused by severe pressure from a malady called compartment syndrome. His thoughts were on The Citadel, FSU's next opponent. He slept only when his foot was numb in an ice bucket beside the bed, and woke with each thaw, the pain growing worse.

Feeling The Pressure
After Thursday's practice, less than two hours after telling reporters he planned to play against the Bulldogs, he was being operated on -- again.

"The doctor told me the normal pressure is 25, and when it's 40 you operate. Mine was about 140," Castillo said. "With the pressure building up, it restricts your blood vessels and all that, and the muscle that connects my heel to the little toe ended up dying from a lack of oxygen and they had to remove it."

With the muscle out of the way, the swelling gone and the surgical wound sufficiently healed, Castillo was back on the field two weeks later.

He has learned to adapt, but he almost quit once.

After breaking a finger and dislocating it twice against North Carolina State last year, Castillo thought it might be best for the team if he didn't come back for a sixth year. Give the scholarship to someone else.

He came back anyway. He came back for a day like Saturday, when he'll look around at 82,000 and believe it was all worth it. He'll wish it wasn't ending.

And maybe it's not.

"I'd love to get my medical degree here at Florida State, get a job here in Tallahassee and eventually take over for one of our great team doctors and always be around Florida State football. That's a dream of mine," he said.

"I think I'd be good working with athletes. I think I could empathize with my patients."