Editor’s note: Westbrook football coach Homer Matlock, his wife Tia and their daughter Zoe sat down with BigCountryPreps.com on Tuesday to share their feelings this holiday season, along with their experience after Zoe was involved in a serious car wreck earlier this month.
WESTBROOK — Find your purpose.
Coming off back-to-back state championships, the Westbrook football team adopted those three words as their motto for the 2023 season during two-a-days in August.
Little did they know at the time just how much that phrase would impact the program from the top down, starting with head coach Homer Matlock and his family.
THE WRECK AND INITIAL REACTIONS
Matlock has never been one that’s shied away from sharing his faith with those around him.
Before the Wildcats beat Rankin 72-22 on Nov. 9 to open the postseason, Matlock talked to his team about handling adversity.
“I tell people that I do more preaching than I do coaching,” he said. “In pregame, I told the guys ‘God is God in the mountaintop and he’s God in the valley. Our situation doesn’t change who He is.”
After leaving Garden City, Matlock’s daughter Zoe was in a vehicle with several others from Westbrook heading to dinner when it was involved in a fatal multi-vehicle wreck on Farm-to-Market Road 33 in Howard County.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, a total of 10 people were injured in the wreck along with one fatality. Zoe Matlock said emotions from the win quickly shifted once the realization of being in a wreck started to take root.
“It went from being on the high of a win to ‘Oh my gosh, what just happened?'” she said. “Going from the ambulance to finally ending up in Lubbock, people that either saw the wreck or heard about it ended up (in Lubbock).”
While Zoe was in a separate vehicle, Homer and his wife Tia were both on the bus with the football team. With conditions having been wet and rainy all night, Tia started getting phone calls letting her know about the wreck, and she was relaying the messages along to Homer so the bus could slow down in time to avoid the wreck.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think that our people would be involved, much less that severe of an accident,” said Tia. “Then my son’s on the phone behind us in the aisle and we are wondering who he was talking to. He said his girlfriend was right behind the accident, saw it take place and wanted to see who the people are.”
It was at that point that Tia got a notification on her iPhone from Life360 that Zoe’s cell phone had detected a crash. She then called her daughter who told her that her stomach hurt and Tia started reassuring her that help was on its way.
“I told Homer that it was Zoe’s vehicle that was in the accident,” Tia said. “We still didn’t know the severity but knew that we needed to get there. He slowed the bus down being a little cautious and nervous. We got (to the scene of the accident) and just ran to the ambulance.”
When he found out that Zoe was involved, Homer said he immediately thought about his sister and niece, along with some really good family friends, who were also in the vehicle.
“When we first heard the report of the wreck, I remember that we started praying (on the bus),” Homer said. “As we started to get closer and they were telling us it was Zoe and our family, I was glad that we were praying, but then we really started praying. God started working on our behalf early.”
Among the first on the scene from the Westbrook community were nurses, fire chiefs and wrecker services, and they immediately took control of the scene.
It was those familiar voices that helped Zoe get through the initial shock of the wreck and start processing what had happened. As the smoke from the airbags deploying started to subside, Zoe started checking on others in the vehicle with her, beginning with her aunt and cousin.
“One of our good family friends had been thrown from the back to the front of the vehicle and didn’t look OK,” Zoe said. “She wasn’t responding (to her mom) and that is probably when I first realized the severity of it and I grabbed her calf, which was next to my leg, and just started praying over her because the situation really looked dark in that moment and I thought we may not have all of our people come out of this.”
Zoe said it was a godsend and a relief to have people she knew on scene to help assess the injured.
“It was really comforting because these were people that I had just been sitting in the stands with,” she said. “Just hearing their voices keep coming back like ‘Zoe, we are right here. Are you OK? How’s your stomach?’ It was just so reassuring that they’ve got us until the other (first responders) come.”
COMMUNITY SUPPORT DURING THE HOSPITALIZATION
From the scene of the accident, Zoe and the others were transported to Scenic Mountain Medical Center in Big Spring. The hospital’s CT machine was inoperable on the night of the accident so the SMMC staff was taking X-rays to determine severity of the injuries.
Zoe’s injuries were one that required her to be transported, via ground ambulance, to University Medical Center in Lubbock.
“Based off how I felt at the scene, I thought I was going to be OK and able to walk away from it despite the horrible stomach pain,” Zoe said. “Not having the CT scan, we didn’t know how much damage had been done (internally) and so that was a big moment of unknown.”
Westbrook Superintendent Dr. Raemi Thompson was one of the first on the scene of the accident and helped WHS principal Shay Avants, who is also the Westbrook defensive coordinator, coordinate all the necessary coverage from SMMC in the aftermath of the wreck.
“Our coaches drove home, drop off the kids on the bus, turn around and drive back (to the hospital),” Homer said. “Everyone was at the hospital until like 4 a.m. on Friday morning.”
Tia said someone from the community had brought the Matlock’s a vehicle to the hospital in Big Spring, which helped save time once it was determined that Zoe would be transported for further testing and evaluation.
It was upon their arrival in Lubbock that they found out just how critically Zoe was injured and that she would need immediate surgery.
A cardiothoracic surgeon advised the family that they were prepping Zoe for the emergency surgery due to her aortic valve rupturing in her gut.
“It was another point of we are doing well on a mountaintop to we are going to emergency surgery,” Homer said. “They took Tia and I to the waiting room and tell us it was going to be a one-hour surgery and I remember looking at Zoe and that I kept telling her that I loved her and wanted her to know that.
“That was a tough day.”
In her own words, finding out she needed emergency surgery is one of Zoe’s “favorite parts of the story.”
Since the time of the wreck, Zoe said she had already accepted that she would be OK because her faith in God allowed her to believe that she wouldn’t suffer as a result of the accident. Even though she went from feeling OK to needing surgery, her faith never wavered.
In fact, Zoe was acting like a coach in the operating room to the team that would be working on her just a few minutes later.
“In the O.R., it was just me and my team,” she said. “I was laying there, and it might have been the pain medications talking, but I told them that I had told my parents ‘I’d see them in a (little bit) and I need y’all to make that happen.'”
Zoe said the team working on her assured her that they’d take care of her.
What nobody knew at that time was that a one-hour surgery would evolve into a six-hour ordeal due to blood clots forming in Zoe’s legs.
“You don’t really know how much time has passed because you’re still kind of in a fog,” said Tia. “But you know it’s been long enough that you wonder when did they really start (the surgery).”
The length of the surgery drained Homer even more than it did Tia because he doesn’t sleep much the night before a game — the emotional roller coaster of which can be quite draining.
He said the coaster began anew when he first heard of the wreck and then it went to another level when he found out who was involved. By the time surgery ended around lunchtime, he felt like it was pretty late in the evening.
“By the time the 6 hours were up, we had a ton of people in the waiting room,” Homer said. “So many people came to love on us, pray with us and pick us up, and it was needed. We were in a bad spot and our community rallied around us big time.”
The surgery lasted so long that Zoe’s body temperature dropped to 93 degrees and the staff at UMC had issues getting a pulse in her feet.
At that point, the Matlock family was just trying to find some hope in the situation and they wanted a winning note of any kind.
Homer said seeing Zoe, who is typically very active, on a ventilator post-surgery was tough situation for him and Tia.
RANKIN RALLIES THE TROOPS FOR ZOE
Despite being on track to graduate from Texas Tech in August 2024, Zoe still returns home to Westbrook on game nights to serve as the Wildcats end zone camera operator.
Missing their last playoff game was tough, but Zoe said the UMC staff, Rankin High School and her mom made sure that she was still able to watch the win. The Matlock’s even had her UMC room decked out in Westbrook colors.
“If I’m not filming the game, I’m still right there and everyone knows that,” she said. “In fact, I’ve been given some hard times for leaving college every weekend for my brother’s games. It could have been so much tougher (not being there) without the amazing support.”
That support she received included Rankin setting up their streaming service so Zoe could watch the Westbrook-Buena Vista game on the TV in her hospital room. Zoe said she had the radio call from the Westbrook Sports Network and felt like she was “right there with them.”
Zoe said an elementary school student who comes down from the stands on Friday nights to help her film made sure she was involved in all of the Wildcats events Friday.
She said he printed out a picture of her and took it with him to a convenience store, to the team send-off and all the way to the game. And that spirit extended to the varsity team wanting to make sure she was included and not forgotten about as well.
“The support was amazing,” Zoe said. “I couldn’t have been more there without being there thanks to them.”
Tia said a family friend used DoorDash to send decorations to the hospital for Zoe.
IT’S MORE THAN A GAME
“The six-man community is an amazing community to begin with,” Homer said. “We had just played Rankin and they were reaching out like crazy and pouring out their love to us. We had played at Garden City and they were reaching out like crazy and then it just started spreading.”
While Homer was putting his role as a father first, the Westbrook football team still had to prepare for a second-round matchup against Buena Vista, a game that the Wildcats would go on to win 68-24 to set up a region championship game this week against Borden County.
“I made one practice last week because I was in Lubbock all the other times,” Homer said. “Even on game day, I (left) Zoe in Lubbock in time to come in and coach the game and then turn around and drive right back.”
He was quick to credit his coaching staff for stepping in to handle his duties so he could focus on Zoe’s recovery. In addition to Avants, Matlock’s coaching staff includes Jeff Bontrager, Kyle Jeffrey and Rusty Gilbreath.
“They stepped in and bridged the gap,” he said. “I’m so thankful for who I have around us and what they were able to do that week when I couldn’t be there.”
It wasn’t just Homer that had people taking care of stuff for him to be with Zoe. Tia, who is a kindergarten teacher in the district, saw the same support.
“Our administrators had everything covered with no questions,” she said. “They didn’t demand anything from us. It’s unbelievable. They have called and checked on us, came when they could and have posted on Facebook to our accounts.”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Homer said he’s lost count of how many friend requests he received, and accepted, on Facebook. Most of them came from people that he doesn’t know but are part of the six-man community.
Tia said she would respond to texts as frequently as she could, but when she’d set her phone down briefly, she’d find 40 new text messages when she picked it up again.
“There were just so many schools, coaches and different people that wanted to reach out and express their love to us,” Homer said. “I remember last year when the Hermleigh boys were involved in the wreck and everybody rallying around them.”
One day during Zoe’s hospitalization, she had a pair of surprise visitors — Brenson Halford and Tyler Stewart, the Hermleigh boys. Homer said they came to encourage his daughter and talk to her about what to expect and how there would be both good days and bad days in the weeks and months ahead.
Having so many visitors left an impression on Zoe because of what it showed the hospital staff, which was willing to run interference on visitors if she needed them to.
“It was really neat because I think they really saw it as a testament to who we are (as a family) to have (that many) people show up for us,” she said. “I had so much energy and was so excited to see everyone. It was that support that carried me through (the hospitalization).”
Zoe said a lot of people would come and share scripture and pray with her to help keep her spirits up and that it was special to experience.
Homer said one of his strongest memories from Zoe’s time in the hospital came before the ventilator was removed. As he was leaving the room, he kissed her on the forehead, reminded her how much he loved her and told her to never quit fighting.
“She cut her eyes at me with a look of ‘Do you know who you’re talking to? Are you kidding me with this?'” he said. “‘I walked out of the room with a smile on my face going ‘That a girl.'”
ZOE’S RECOVERY AND THE NEXT STEPS
“To start off, I would like to greatly thank all of our support as I definitely could not have made the recovery as fast without (it),” Zoe said. “I would also like to say that the surgical ICU (at Lubbock’s UMC) said that we broke the record of most visitors in the ICU that night.
“That was really special to me to be able to realize that the community is not only rallying behind the football team, but me and my family individually was really special. Visitor after visitor came in and showed so much love, it was really inspiring and motivating.”
In order to get discharged, Zoe had several more steps to fight through, including advancing her diet from ice chips to solid foods so she could demonstrate full body function. She said she was quick to hand over anything relating to the pump she could control with her pain meds.
After coming off the liquid diet, Zoe had what she called “the best hospital Jell-O ever.”
After an early morning meeting with the trauma team, Zoe was released from the hospital on the morning of Nov. 18. She was so ready to get out that when they made their rounds that morning, she had already gotten herself out of bed and dressed without help … well mostly.
Tia still had to help her put socks on because of the staples in her abdominal wound that won’t be removed until Dec. 5 — two days after Zoe gets her class ring from Texas Tech.
DON’T MESS WITH TRADITIONS
If you’re wondering where you’re going to find Zoe this weekend, you won’t have to look too far.
With the Wildcats still in the hunt for their third consecutive state championship, the recovering Matlock will be all over the place — as long as her health allows.
A Westbrook tradition is to have an early morning practice on Thanksgiving Day followed by a community breakfast. Zoe said one of the first questions she asked when she found out she was being released was if she would have any restrictions on her.
The only restriction she was given was not being allowed to lift more than 10 pounds.
The freedom to return to normalcy is something she’s fully embracing.
“I just want to give back to the people that have been here for me the whole time,” she said. “Whether its a hug or being able to say thank you. I cannot wait for everyone to be there all at once and to just be able to truly give back all the positivity, motivation and love they showed me and I’ve been counting down the days until then.”
What about Saturday’s 2 p.m. kickoff at the Mustang Bowl in Sweetwater? Zoe’s already got a plan for that, too.
“I’ve got a stool (to sit on) and I didn’t realize how badly I wanted to be in that end zone again,” Zoe said. “I love my job filming for them and didn’t really think I’d have it taken away from me anytime soon. I cannot wait to get back to that.”