Ryan K Morris / Special to the Daily News

Nachel Dupras, 18, older sister of Elbrinet Dupras, the Palmetto Ridge football player that collapsed during practice on Thursday, May 8, 2008, talks about her brother's recovery while in the ICU at Tampa General Hospital.

Elbrinet Dupras

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TAMPA — Less than 48 hours ago, Elbrinet Dupras was dancing in the end zone.

Slicing and dicing his way past defenders, the 5-foot-6, 180-pound teen, strong enough to play nose tackle, had just scored a touchdown at one of Palmetto Ridge High’s spring football practices on Thursday afternoon.

Nice run, his coach thought.

Elbrinet jogged back to the huddle. He waited to hear the next play.

Then, he collapsed.

“I thought he was cramping,” Palmetto Ridge coach Tim Speakman said.

It was much worse than that.

The 16-year-old junior was rushed to Physicians Regional hospital off Pine Ridge Road, then airlifted to Tampa General Hospital, a Level 1 trauma center.

“They found blood on his brain,” sister Nachel, 18, said.

By late Friday, Dupras was taken off a respirator and speaking with family members.

Speakman, who has watched tape of the incident repeatedly since Thursday afternoon, isn’t sure how Dupras developed blood on his brain. He said he didn’t see Dupras hit his head.

“The surgeon we talked to said they didn’t even know if it was football-related,” Speakman said.

Whatever happened, it was serious.

As his parents and sister kept vigil, Elbrinet remained unconscious until early Friday morning. No one could sleep.

“I was scared,” Nachel said simply.

“It kept me awake all last night — thinking about Elbrinet, thinking about my own kids,” said Speakman, who spent most of Friday at the hospital.

It was less than two months ago, after all, that Elbrinet’s second cousin Ereck Plancher died after participating in offseason conditioning drills for the football team at the University of Central Florida.

Elbrinet’s family couldn’t help but worry, thinking of Plancher, a 2006 Lely High graduate, and what happened to him at football practice.

Huddled in the early morning hours, interrupted only by medical staff and the irritating yet reassuring beep of medical monitors in Tampa General’s pediatric intensive care unit, Elbrinet’s family members tried to block their worries with constant prayer.

Then, an answer.

Around 9:30 Friday morning, Elbrinet came back.

His words were jumbled at first, so his father, Elejean, tried to tell Elbrinet that he was in the hospital.

“Why?” said the teenager. “I’m not supposed to be here. Dad, I want to go home.”

Nachel felt an immediate sense of relief.

“It was so scary, but now I’m happy,” she said later on Friday afternoon, as Elbrinet continued to speak and move around in his bed. “I think it’s not so serious. He is going to be OK.”

Almost as if he’d heard her, at that moment Elbrinet started moving back and forth, pulling at the brace he wore around his neck.

There he was — one of just two starters to return to Palmetto Ridge’s defense.

The kid so strong his friends jokingly called him “Steroids” after just a couple weeks of weightlifting.

The kid so determined that he became a starter just two years after he first started playing football, in ninth grade at Lely before transferring to Palmetto Ridge when the family moved. The kid who just last week beat everyone on the Bears team — lifting 315 pounds on the power clean.

His eyes shut, his powerful body swaddled sterile hospital bed sheets, it was almost hard to see the strength and courage that lurked beneath, inside of Elbrinet’s still growing frame.

But his slightest movement, the slightest noise from his lips — those previously insignificant movements — made it seem that maybe Elbrinet really would be OK.

As Friday went on, Elbrinet’s condition continued to improve.

“I don’t know if everything’s OK,” Speakman said, “but it’s better than it was last night. But he is not out of the woods yet.”

The best sign, perhaps:

“His breathing apparatuses are out,” Speakman said.

Elbrinet, the kid who scored that touchdown on Thursday afternoon and beat all his teammates on the power clean, seemed to be on his way back. But will he come all the way back — to the gridiron?

Elejean and Nachel say Elbrinet loved to play football — that it was all he ever talked about. Still, Nachel’s not sure if her brother will ever return to the field.

“Even if he can, I’m not sure my mother would let him,” she said.

Staff writer Scott Hotard contributed to this article.