From a very young age, Keith Kloiber had a vision for playing football. He had his first taste of victory as a member of the Western Communities Football League (WCFL) Varsity Tackle Ravens team.
Then, at the age of 13, Keith’s football vision and eyesight were severely impacted — literally — following a freak injury to his left eye while playing in a WCFL flag football game on April 13, 2024.
To properly appreciate where Keith is right now — more than two years later — it’s important to go back to the day of the injury.
His parents, Mark and Katiuska Kloiber, remember the incident like it was yesterday.
“My son and two defenders jumped up to catch a pass in a flag football game, and when my son fell to the ground without the ball, one of the defenders came crashing down on him, and his elbow hit my son in his left eye,” Mark recalled.
The damage done was immediate and painful. It never occurred to Mark that you could get severely injured in a flag football game, but his son felt the brunt of the collision. The injury required an emergency response.
“The medics at WCFL acted rapidly and told us that he needed to be sent to St. Mary’s on the Trauma Hawk,” Mark said. “He arrived at the emergency room blind in his left eye. The personnel at the hospital quickly realized they had a two-hour window to relieve the pressure on his optic nerve, otherwise he could potentially lose total eyesight.”
That was the first emergency procedure performed.
Dr. Peter Rubin was contacted by the hospital, and after directing the team to perform the first operation, he came to do the second one, which allowed Keith, at that point at least, to see some shapes.
“Our son’s passion for returning to the football field remained strong, and he kept asking when he could go back to playing football,” Mark said. “Within a week after the injury, he was beginning to see more clearly.”
By the summer of his upcoming freshman year (2024-25), Keith was well enough to go through summer conditioning workouts with the Wellington High School football team. At the time, Keith was a rising freshman. By the end of that summer, he was the starting quarterback for Wellington’s junior varsity team and the second-string varsity quarterback, behind senior starting quarterback Jonathan Paul. Keith survived the 2025 football season with the Wolverines without any further injuries.
Fast forward to this April. Keith made a return to the WCFL’s flag football league. He played in the WCFL’s six-team High School Prep division as his team’s starting quarterback. It had been nearly two years since the injury that briefly took his eyesight, but the injury never stopped his dream of making a football comeback.
After playing injury-free in the regular season this past spring, Keith’s team advanced to the Super Bowl Championship Game on May 16, where his team, the Florida Gators, played and defeated the Alabama Crimson Tide, 26-7. In that game, Keith threw for 125 yards, two touchdowns and an extra point. He also ran for 110 yards, a touchdown and an extra point.
While he was playing WCFL flag football this past spring, he was also practicing high school spring football with head coach Pete Walker and his WHS teammates. It just so happens that the WHS spring game, which marked the end of spring football, was played on the evening of Friday, May 15 against the Pahokee Blue Devils — less than 24 hours prior to that Super Bowl flag football finale.
Well, toward the end of the first half of the spring game, Keith was sacked for a second time by the Blue Devils and was ruled out for the rest of the game by Walker and the athletic trainer.
Keith’s parents were told by the trainer about a possible concussion, so they took him to the Wellington Regional Medical Center at 10 p.m. on that Friday night to have him tested. Five hours later, at 3 a.m., he was released from the hospital and was cleared to play in the flag football championship about 12 hours later, which he did, and his team won.
Keith’s passion for football and vision to play as a high school quarterback remains intact.
This incident also impacted Keith’s younger brother, Christopher. For Keith’s WCFL comeback this year, Christopher was playing right by his side and decided to play up two years, joining him in the High School Prep league as a 13-year-old. Christopher helped the team advance into the Super Bowl and, ultimately, win the championship.
In early June, when summer conditioning for the WHS football team begins, Keith Kloiber plans to be there, as he continues to pursue his vision of playing football, with the full support of his parents.
“He’s so passionate about it,” his mother Katiuska said.
“This is what he wants to do,” his father Mark added. “He’s very determined to play.”
