For months, linebacker Ammon Allen and tight end Isaiah Gerena spent their mornings in the same place – the training room.
Nearly one year ago, during the 2025 spring ball practice slate, both Allen and Gerena suffered season-ending injuries that threatened their final collegiate football seasons.
Now, as spring football returns, both players are finally working their way back onto the field for one last go-around as Lumberjacks.
For Allen, the road back started with a moment he still remembers vividly. Just a week before the spring game, Allen blitzed off the edge on the first play of a spring scrimmage. When he jumped to pick off a screen, he planted and immediately knew.
Allen dislocated his knee, tore his ACL, both his lateral and medial meniscus and ruptured bone cartilage in his knee. Ten days later, he underwent surgery.
The recovery process was grueling. As a result of the bone cartilage damage, Allen couldn't walk for the first six weeks. He spent six hours every day in a machine that would manually bend his knee gradually until he could reach 90 degrees. This was just the beginning.
The long recovery was a mental challenge for Allen.
"It taught me a lot of patience and sacrifice," Allen said. "There's a saying I've seen in life, 'All failure is physiological until death.' You either learn from your failure or you get consumed by it."
Despite the setback, Allen said he never doubted he would return.
"As soon as I got injured, it was a matter of time until I was going to be back," Allen said. "There was no doubt in my mind that I wouldn't come back from this injury. If you put your mind to something, nothing's going to stop you."
Trainers initially estimated Allen's recovery to be around nine months, but later doctors confirmed that to be closer to 12-15 months.
Rather than giving up on his senior season, Allen embraced the new timeline.
"It's you versus you every single day and I treat it like that," Allen said. "In my head, I'm like I've got 12-15 months to be at the best of my abilities, to be the most athletic I can when I return."
While Allen was grinding through rehab, he wasn't alone. Gerena was going through a similar process.
The tight end transferred to NAU from Morgan State prior to the 2022 season, looking for an experience far from his home in New Jersey and was drawn to the program because of the relationships he built both in and outside of football.
Two years ago, he also began pursuing a master's degree in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. His timeline for the next few years wrote itself, until it all changed last spring.
During a spring showcase, Gerena went up for a jump and immediately knew something was wrong.
"I kinda right away," Gerena said. "I knew it wasn't normal."
Gerena, who had torn his left ACL, was able to make his way off the field and trainers helped carry him to the training room.
At first, Gerena's hopes were low. He didn't know if he would ever play football again. After a long two hours, doctors confirmed he could return after surgery and rehab. The news was bittersweet.
"It was definitely a mix of emotions," Gerena said. "Especially given how old I am and the timeframe of which it happened."
The injury forced him to reconsider his future and reflect on how he handled adversity.
Earlier in his career, Gerena had suffered a foot injury that worsened during summer workouts and ultimately cost him an entire season in 2023. He said throughout that season and his recovery process he spent a lot of time feeling sorry for himself.
This time, he approached recovery differently. A big reason was Allen.
"When you wake up in the morning, it's a pain that you can't really understand or explain," Gerena said. "So having someone next to you who understands that same thing helps."
The two trained side-by-side for months, pushing each other through the difficult process.
"(Allen) is somebody who not only understands, but is dominating the whole process next to you," Gerena said. "So it makes it hard too. You want to still be competitive and not soft next to him as he's dominating and keeping that competitive nature."
Gerena said that Allen's presence kept him mentally focused during his toughest moments.
"He's probably one of the only reasons I was able to get through it and didn't have my mind veer off to other places," Gerena said.
Even while sidelined, Gerena found ways to contribute to the team by mentoring younger players who had to step into his role.
Looking back now, he said the experience helped him grow as a teammate.
"I feel like the first time I was injured I was worried about me," Gerena said. "This time having Ammon around, someone who is not feeling sorry for himself, dominating everyday, I couldn't feel sorry for myself."
Now, a year later, both players are preparing for what will be their final season of college football and are poised to provide the Lumberjacks with impact play, just as they did prior to their injuries.
In 2024, Gerena started seven games and appeared in all 13. He tied for the team-lead with three receptions for 33 yards the last time he was on the field in NAU's FCS Playoff game at Abilene Christian.
Similarly, Allen – an Arizona transfer in his third season as a Lumberjack – is hoping to return to his all-conference form. Allen recorded 63 tackles in 2024 and earned All-Big Sky Honorable Mention.
Following their injuries, both Gerena and Allen return with a sense of urgency.
"My mindset is to have fun and really just enjoy my time on the field now," Gerena said. "Not being on the field for a year, you start thinking about all the crazy goals you had as a kid, and you're just mad that you're not out there playing football."
"It's going to be my last season," Allen added. "I have to give it everything I got no matter what."
More than anything, he's looking forward to returning to the field with the teammates who helped him through the toughest year of his career.
"One of the things I'm most excited about is just playing with the brotherhood again," Allen said. "I want to give everything I got, both physically and emotionally, to the team in order to win the Big Sky Conference championship, win a national championship. That's our goal and everyone's got to buy in."
