Preston Wilson Speaks of Divine Healing Following Iowa State Game in 2023
STILLWATER – We’re going to do a little time traveling with this article as I’d like to take you back to the first four weeks of the 2023 season. It was certainly a rocky start to the year for Oklahoma State football as the Cowboys went 2-2, with a 27-13 win over Central Arkansas, a team who went 7-4 in the FCS, and a 27-15 win over Arizona State, who went just 3-9 last year.
Then the Pokes lost two-straight games, an incredibly disappointing 33-7 home loss to South Alabama, who went 7-6, and 34-27 to Iowa State. As we all know, that was a turning point game for the Cowboys as Alan Bowman was named the full-time starter, the offense really started to click, and the rest is history. The Cowboys went on to win 10 games, including 27-24 win over OU in the final Bedlam for the foreseeable future, a berth in the Big 12 Championship game and a win over Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl.
However, that Iowa State game could’ve made things quite a bit different as the Cowboys nearly lost their starting right guard, Preston Wilson.
Wilson spoke to the media following Tuesday’s spring practice. One of the things he talked about was a wrist injury he sustained against the Cyclones. Missing a few games in 2022, Wilson missed the season opener in 2023.
Fighting through the wrist injury to finish the game, Wilson met with team doctors following the game to get a diagnosis. According to Preston, what happened next is nothing short of a miracle.
“So, I was playing at Iowa State, and I got my hand a little banged up,” said Wilson. “I fought through the game, and I realized something was wrong with it, a little off. I get in after the game and I take some medicine the doctor had given me and whatnot, kind of make the inflammation and swelling go down to try and get a real diagnosis of what’s going on. I’m sitting there, it’s about midnight and we’re back from the game and it’s my first real time getting a look at my hand. I look down and my wrist is not in the right place, I’m looking and going ‘oh goodness,’ like I move my thumb and the bone in my wrist keeps popping out on the side. I can’t move my thumb straight unless I’m pulling it. It kind of instantly hit me because I had been hurt the season before and I was like ‘God, there’s no way you’re doing this to me, but I know you’re the only one that’s going to fix this. There’s no other doctor that’s going to get me back in time for the rest of the season.’ So, I went and grabbed my girlfriend because I felt like I got to pray for it right now. Then God was like no, she has to do it. So, I went and grabbed her, and we laid hands on it, and we felt my wrist move back into place, felt the bones turn like corkscrew and it locked back into place, and I’ve had no problems with this wrist since. 100% healed.
“It got x-rayed the next day and [the doctors] said there was no proof of a break. It felt sore after, like a jammed thumb, but just iced it and just took the meds like I was supposed to and it was good. Power of prayer.”
There were a lot of prayers going up through the first four games of the season last year to help fix a lot of things with the team. Preston Wilson and his girlfriend sent up one more, certainly an important one that had a lot of bearing on the season as he went on to start the final 10 games of the season with the 11th-best pass-blocking grade in the Big 12 and the best on the team, with a min. of 100 snaps, according to PFF.
Had Wilson missed what easily could’ve been the remainder of the season with a broken wrist, the outcome of the year could’ve been a lot different. Cowboy fans are no strangers to depth issues with the offensive line, issues which have derailed entire seasons. Just take a look back at the 2022 season. That’s a year everyone around the program hopes and prays to forget.