“Falling in love” is a phrase used to describe the transition from attraction to love for another person. For Cassie Gonsior, a Social Studies teacher at East, she fell pretty hard before love came around.

“The way he tells it, he thought I was dead,” Gonsior said. “So he vaulted over the net to call 911.”

Gonsior met her husband, Josh Gonsior, a substitute teacher at East, while playing on the same indoor soccer team. One fated day in the winter of 2009, which coincidentally happened to be Valentine’s Day, she was playing soccer when there was a collision that sent her flying into a concrete wall.  Gonsior took a hard fall on the court and had quite an injury.

“I threw up my arms to protect myself, but still ended up hitting the wall,” Gonsior said. “I basically remember falling to the ground, and when I lifted my head up and opened my eyes, blood was just dripping onto the floor.”

Gonsior went to the hospital and ended up breaking her right arm and having her forehead glued shut. She even later went back to find out about her left wrist being broken. The damage that she took kept her in recovery for six weeks. However, there is a silver lining to her injury. Through this accident, she gained a relationship.

“Josh and I, even though we knew each other, we were not really friends at that point, but that was our beginning,” she said. “We always talk about how he called 911 for me on Valentine’s Day to make sure I wasn’t dead.”

From there, their relationship prospered. They grew closer together and ended up getting married on July 6, 2013.

Though Gonsior may have taken the phrase “falling head over heels” too literally, she was able to find the love of her life.