There was a time earlier this year when Will Posey wasn’t sure he’d ever ride a dirt bike again.

The Dalton native, who has been racing since he was 4 years old, suffered a serious head injury in October that knocked him unconscious and left him in a hospital overnight with bleeding of the brain.

The injury was the worst of a long list of injuries he’d suffered over the past four years (concussions, broken wrists/hands/collarbone, torn MCL, serious hip-kidney injuries) and after this one, his father Billy Posey ’ a recreational dirt bike rider himself in high school ’ said enough was enough.

No more dirt bikes for his son.

’I told him his body couldn’t take it anymore,’ Billy Posey said. ’He was the most depressed boy you ever saw because he couldn’t ride.’

Posey, now 18 and a home-school student who graduated earlier this year, considers not being able to ride his dirt bike the lowest point in his life.

’Everything I had worked for my entire life was gone in my mind,’ said Posey, who began selling off a lot of his dirt bike equipment. ’It was a really bad time in life.’

Though there were some positives that came from his time away from riding, such as devoting more time to his studies and graduating three months early in February, as well as meeting new people through other hobbies, the absence of a dirt bike was taking its toll on Posey.

At the beginning of May, Posey decided to talk to his father about riding again. It had been seven months since his head injury, and he felt he was healthy enough to ride again.

’He explained to me how much he loved the sport,’ Billy Posey said. ’When your kid looks at you a certain way, you can see how much it means to him. I told him he can ride, but just be careful.’

Within hours, Posey was back on his dirt bike, riding in a nearby field. The head injury he suffered in October was in his first race after a severe hip injury that sidelined him for five months, so he said it felt like it was the first time he had raced in more than a year.

But after riding his bike again, he felt good enough to race the next day in Bremen in an area qualifier for the Air Nautiques/AMA Amateur National Championships on Aug. 4-8 at country music star Loretta Lynn’s property in Hurricane Mills, Tenn.

The qualifier in Bremen called for racing two heats known as ’motos.’ Posey would need a top eight overall finish to make the cut and advance to the regional qualifier in Pell City, Ala., at the end of May. He finished fourth in the first moto and first in the second. Out of approximately 80 racers, Posey had made the cut.

In Pell City, he had to race in three motos and again come away with a top eight overall finish to qualify for the nationals. He finished third, third and seventh to earn a fourth overall finish. He was headed to the national championship as one of just 42 racers in his class (450C, highest possible) out of tens of thousands that tried out all over the country.

’That was probably the happiest I’ve ever been racing,’ Posey said. ’I did what I didn’t think I could do, which was overcome myself.