By Rachel Slajda

Following strict doctor’s orders, Keith Bertolino will have to wait until mid-winter before he can ski again. If it were up to him, he would be gearing up for the season at the first snowfall.

A car accident on the way to a ski competition last season landed him in the hospital in critical condition. The same crash killed his teammate.

Though Bertolino will not be able to join his teammates this year, he said he will be “back out on the slopes in February.” “Next season there should be no problems,” he said.

The accident left Bertolino with a fractured second vertebrae and several fractured ribs, a punctured lung and head trauma which caused bleeding and swelling in his brain.

Seven months later, he is “back to normal,” organizing a research project for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics En-gineers and remotely managing his own information technology company called Cipher Tech. The sophomore engineering major is also taking 21 credits to make up for the three classes he couldn’t complete last semester. He was able to finish one of his classes from home, over the phone and through e-mail.

President Richard Freeland made routine calls to his house during the summer to check on his condition, he said.

“The school has been good,” he said.

After the Feb. 7 accident in Greenfield, he was taken to the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, where he stayed for two weeks before returning to his home in West Nyack, N.Y. A week later, he was back in the hospital for two weeks to treat an infection caused by a breathing tube.

When Bertolino’s parents heard the news of the accident, they immediately headed up north to be by their son’s side. For a while his mother, Kathleen, said she thought he had been hurt while skiing.

“I couldn’t grasp what the nurse was saying,” his mother said.

But even throughout the recovery process, she said she never doubted her son would return to school.

“As soon as he came to and was able to talk, he was worried about school work,” she said. “Never did he complain at any point — ever.”

For three months he wore a halo, a device that is bolted to the head to keep the head and neck in place. He wore a neck brace for one month after that, which came off in June.

“After four months – nothing. They just said to take it easy,” he said.

He’s fully recovered, except for his neck, which still lacks a full range of motion.

“It’s a small price to pay for walking,” he said.

Bertolino’s doctors told the 19-year-old he will have to wait a full year before taking on any contact sports – skiing included.

“I was glad to see how well he had recovered,” said teammate Rhiannon Quirk. “It was really good to see him just up and walking, because the last time I had seen him he was in a hospital bed with a halo anchored to his head.

“He’s still the same energetic, happy person I knew him to be before the accident. Actually, he was surprisingly positive through the entire thing,” she said.

Not only will the ski team have to deal with Bertolino’s absence this season, but the absence of freshman team member Michael Costa, who died in the crash. Kristina Brodsky was also injured, suffering nearly the same injuries as Bertolino.

Ski team members visited Bertolino and Brodsky in the hospital after the accident.

Quirk said it was “a breath of fresh air after [Costa’s] funeral because they were recovering really well, and they were in a lot better condition than any of us had anticipated in only one week after the accident.”

“Unfortunately, [Costa] was not as lucky,” Bertolino said. “It’s not like I lost somebody who was just an acquaintance. He was a friend of mine.”

The accident happened early in the morning when Bertolino’s Ford Mustang lost traction around a turn on Route 2. Rain from the previous night had turned the road to ice. The car swerved into the opposite lane and was hit by another car that was driving about 50 mph, the speed limit in that area, Bertolino said.

“I remember grabbing breakfast and jumping in the car. I don’t remember anything for four days after that,” he said. The police later told his mother that there had been 50 accidents that morning in the area.

“I think about it every day. Everyone says you can’t blame yourself, and I don’t think I could have done anything about it, but there are all the what-ifs. If someone died in your car and you were driving, you still feel the blame because you’re the one in control, or the one who’s supposed to be in control.”