Alex Cocoziello was told he'd never walk again after an accident split his skull when he was three years old. Today, roaming the sidelines, he's one of the central figures on the Cornell lacrosse team that's out for its first national championship game berth in more than 20 years.

FOXBOROUGH, MASS. -- For nine months, Sharon Cocoziello dozed through her nights in a hospital chair. Every day, she'd sit beside her son, Alex, as he healed from head trauma that doctors estimated would leave the right side of his body paralyzed forever. Every night, she'd fight the nurses who told her she had to go home. She would, invariably, win.

"I never left," she said. "They didn't want me there. Parents weren't allowed to sleep over. They had to change the rules after seeing how he progressed because I was there."

When Alex Cocoziello was rushed into emergency brain surgery 18 years ago, the three-year-old's cranium split open after his father accidentally hit him on the downswing with a golf club, doctors told Sharon that Alex had a 30 percent chance of surviving the surgery. After that, they told her Alex's right side would be paralyzed forever, that the Cocoziellos should prepare their house for a permanently handicapped child.

She fired them.