Paxton has friend for inspiration

FOXBOROUGH -- Lonie Paxton has played his part well during the Patriots' postseason run toward another Super Bowl.

While his role as long snapper has at times been integral, he has performed it without much fanfare. He realized long ago that unless he makes a mistake, he'll get little recognition. On the other hand, "a snap can go wrong and you get in the headlines everywhere," he said. The same goes for a hold on a field goal attempt. Just ask the Cowboys' Tony Romo.

Paxton again will fill his role tonight in the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts.

Despite toiling largely in anonymity, Paxton made a memorable mark five years ago, when the Patriots' magical run began with a 16-13 win over Oakland at snowy Foxboro Stadium. After Adam Vinatieri's winning field goal in overtime, Paxton dropped and made a snow angel that has become part of team lore.

There has been disappointment as well, such as when Paxton tore his right ACL at Miami in December 2003.

Both good times and bad have brought reflection, and inevitably thoughts of a childhood friend who, like Paxton, was living a childhood dream before it turned into a nightmare.

Paxton and Brock Duquesnel were boyhood friends in California. Big-time jocks who had big-time aspirations. Paxton followed a conventional path -- playing college football -- in an unconventional way. Who focuses on a career as a long snapper in high school? Paxton did back in Corona, Calif., perhaps pushed a little by his father, who had season tickets to the Los Angeles Rams that just happened to be near where the Rams' long snappers practiced their craft.

But Paxton was into more than football. He also loved to go snowboarding with Duquesnel.

After high school, while Paxton moved to the next level of football at Sacramento State, Duquesnel went into a new wave of sports, professional snowboarding.

In June 1998, Duquesnel was doing a promotional spot in the Mammoth Mountain region of California when he landed the wrong way. He came down on his back, crushing his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Duquesnel was airlifted to a hospital in Reno, but Paxton didn't learn of the accident for a few days.

Paxton immediately went to his friend's side and spent a week with him, trying to make sense of it all. After the initial shock, anger, and sadness, the competitive nature in both friends kicked in. Duquesnel still wanted to compete at some level, but was shocked to find what he felt was subpar equipment available.

That spawned a different dream as the friends formed a non-profit organization called the Active Force Foundation. The Foundation's mission is to "design, engineer, and donate a wide range of quality adaptive sports equipment to disabled individuals. The goal is for AFF to provide these items at nominal or no cost to the recipient. AFF's ability to do this depends entirely on its ability to receive donations and other support from AFF's friends, family, and community, and corporate supporters. AFF's goals are to encourage a better and healthier quality of life to individuals with disabilities and to design and engineer adaptive sports equipment."

Duquesnel is the president and driving force of the foundation. Paxton is the vice president, lending support however he can. Being a member of a Super Bowl-winning team helps.

Paxton remembers feeling sorry for himself after he tore his ACL. He also remembers getting a tough love talk from Duquesnel sitting in a wheelchair, reminding him of the mobility he still had.

Paxton now has another opportunity. Although Vinatieri will be with the opposition tonight, Stephen Gostkowski hasn't missed a beat as his fill-in, including last week's winning field goal against the Chargers.

When the Patriots set up for a field goal tonight, as has been the case since he was signed as a rookie free agent in April 2000, Lonie Paxton, the kid who had a childhood dream of being an NFL long snapper, will start the proceedings by simply doing his job.