If it is adversity that makes people grow, then Sacramento State starting quarterback Ryan Leadingham will be a jolly green and gold giant this year.

This Saturday, Leadingham will suit up for the Hornets in their opener at Division I-A Nevada after missing the last six games of last season due to injuries in his non-throwing arm.

The list of problems with the arm reads like a hit list of injuries a quarterback in particular would never want to suffer: three broken bones in the left wrist, a fractured left elbow, and a dislocated left wrist and thumb.

While the UC Davis Aggies rallied for a 31-27 victory in the final minute last Oct. 25 in the Causeway Classic, Leadingham was undergoing emergency surgery on his arm.

Despite the severity of the injuries Leadingham appears to have suffered no ill effects from the injury that will carry over into the 2004 campaign.

“(The arm) is good. It’s real good. It’s just a matter of it being in football shape now,” Leadingham said. “Now that I have been practicing with it, it’s been a little sore, but I’ll just have to deal with it this year.”

Leadingham’s roommate Kenan Smith a wide receiver on last year’s squad spent the night in the hospital with Leadingham the night of the injury and says the arm is substantially better than it was last October.

“He tells me every day, he says it feels good. It’s different, because he tore everything in there, but it definitely feels better than it did in the hospital,” Smith said.

“His arm is back to normal. I wasn’t expecting it to be like it is,” head coach Steve Mooshagian said. “It’s almost as if the Lead right before the injury got reincarnated and came back.”

When Leadingham takes the reigns of the Hornet offense once again Saturday he’ll be on the field with a new-look squad. There have been some major changes this year to an offense that was second to last in the Big Sky in scoring average, total offense and total defense.

With promoted offensive coordinator Craig Young and a new offensive line, the team plans on running a more balanced attack, featuring both senior All-American wide receiver Fred Amey and junior running back Tyrone Gross, both of whom are coming off season-ending injuries in 2003.

Even with the fact that all three of the Hornets’ best skills position players are coming off of injuries and with all the changes to the offense, Leadingham still believes that the Hornets are capable of making it all the way to the NCAA I-AA playoffs this year.

“We should (make the playoffs). Every year, I say that and something just goes wrong. We’ll have an injury here, a game we lose on a freak (accident) … It’s the little things that happen to us that we can’t let happen,” Leadingham said.

“We have to expect to win and we have to expect to not lose.”

In their third game of the season this year, Leadingham and the Hornets will square off again with the Aggies in the first meeting of the two teams since Leadingham was injured.

“Every year I look forward to the Davis game, but this year I have a lot more to look forward to, just because of the fact that I have never beaten Davis,” Leadingham said.

“And the fact that they took me out pushes another button.”

Leadingham’s attitude toward all of the season all its potential storylines is to be expected. According to his former head coach Steve Bogan at South Hills High School in West Covina, Leadingham has always been ready to take on a challenge.

“He is a very bright warrior,” Bogan said. “He is perfectly wired for competitive sports.”

After this year, the next logical challenge is pro football. But Leadingham, a senior communications major with a concentration in organizational communications, is not going to let things get to his head.

“There is always a knock on you, there are always doubts,” Leadingham said. “If it happens, it happens.”