By Erik Brady, USA TODAY
Trevor Wikre had a choice: Lose his pinkie finger or lose his football season.
"I said, 'Cut it off,' " Wikre says. He took no time to ponder. "I knew right away," he says. "It wasn't a hard choice."
Wikre, 21, is a guard for Mesa State College, a Division II school in Grand Junction, Colo. He had told teammates a couple of weeks earlier how much he loved them as brothers.
"I said, 'I'd take a bullet for you,' " he says. "Well, this was my chance to put words into action. This was my bullet."
The Mesa Mavericks will play their first game on national cable TV Thursday night (8 ET, CBS College Sports) vs. Western State (Colo.). Mesa is 5-2, 5-0 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
The trauma came Sept. 30 when Wikre's right little finger shattered at practice. He pulled off a glove, saw bone jutting out and asked trainers to tape it up. They declined and got him to the hospital, where doctors advised him that he needed season-ending surgery.
"I'm a senior," Wikre (pronounced WICK-er-EE) says. "If they put pins in there, my career was finished. I told them to just take it off. They said I was being dramatic. I said, yeah, well, losing my season is dramatic, too."
Doctors tried to dissuade him, he says, but they were at last persuaded to take the finger at the second knuckle, leaving a stump.
"Even with the operation I was going to have trouble with it later in life," he says. "I think that's why they let me" make the decision to amputate.
Wikre missed one game. He played last week with a rubber cast in a 26-3 win against Colorado State-Pueblo.
Did he find any difference in how he played? "Just one less finger to hold with," he says, laughing softly.
How about differences in life?
"I can't hit the P on the keyboard very well," he says. "I have to train my ring finger to get over there. It takes time."
Wikre got change at the grocery store the other day and felt the coins slipping through his fingers. The pinky is the plug that closes a clenched hand.
How about sipping from a wine glass with pinky finger demurely extended?
"That's not me," Wikre says. "I'm a beer guy. No fanciness here."
Wikre, 6-3, 280 pounds, is majoring in K-12 education and adaptive physical education. He wants to be a phys ed teacher for special needs children.
Traci Young, his fiancé, is a bank teller who graduated from Mesa last spring.
"I thought it was pretty crazy, but if you know Trevor you understand," she says. "Sometimes he'll stick it in my face as a joke and I'll squeal. It's gross to look at but, you know, I'm getting used to it."
Mesa coach Joe Ramunno lost his left pinky in a shop class accident in 1979, his senior year in high school.
"We're a matched set," Ramunno says of the bizarre coincidence. "I'm a good source for him on how it is to live with."
Unlike Wikre, Ramunno did not choose to have his pinky amputated. "The doctors made that decision for me," he says. And he would have advised Wikre to save his finger, but it was gone before the coach could give advice.
"He's pretty darn committed to this team," Ramunno says. "I know where his heart is at. He's a special young man."
An automatic bid to the Division II playoffs goes to the conference champ.
"We want to win the RMAC and make some noise in the playoffs," Wikre says.
The symbol for a team that finishes No. 1 is an index finger held high. "I don't need my pinky for that," Wikre says
