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NCAA News Archive - 2000
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Physical recovery for student-athletes often hinges on emotional factors
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STAFF WRITER
College sports fans are accustomed to seeing athletes sustain and respond to varying degrees of injury.
They've seen the volleyball player smacked in the face by a hard-hit ball, "shake it off" and continue playing through the pain. They've seen the basketball player take more than a few moments to get back up after meeting an elbow. And in rare and unwelcome times, they've observed an athlete writhing in pain, or worse yet, hardly moving, carted out of the playing arena and into an ambulance.
Injury is as much a part of college athletics as team mascots, tailgate parties and come-from-behind victories. So, too, are doctor's visits, hours of rehabilitation and efforts to get back into playing form once an injury has occurred. Every injured athlete is faced with the usual questions: How bad is it? Will I miss a few games? Am I out for the season?
For some injured athletes, the question even becomes, will I ever have a normal life after this?
On the scale of athletics injuries, catastrophic injury denotes the most severe type. Such injuries are both the most difficult to recover from and the most feared.
Then, there are the broken bones and torn ligaments that sideline athletes for weeks, but not life.
Finally, some athletes have what falls under the general heading of "body ache." Stiff joints. Random cracking and popping. Recovering bruises, strained muscles. Their injuries are not so much a sign of danger or doom, but rather badges of courage and subtle reminders with every move that you are, or have been, a college athlete.
Part of the student-athlete experience is dealing with injury, in whatever form it appears. Often, injury gives rise to uncertainty and doubt. It affects student-athletes in different ways, depending upon the injury itself and the ability of the athlete to cope.
Compounding the injury are pressures, real or perceived, from coaches, teammates and even parents to "suck it up" and get back in the game. Injury comes with expectations that athletes will do their best to perform at the highest level possible for the duration of their careers. No matter the level of play, most college athletes will have to deal with some form of injury and find a way to overcome it.
"Are you hurt or are you injured?" It's a question that Don Lowe, director of sports medicine at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has posed to athlete after athlete during his 35-year career in the field. "I have athletes who years later tell me they're still trying to figure it out," Lowe said.
The question, he said, seeks to determine the student-athlete's mettle. "The people who are highly motivated know there are things that will be sore and hurt, bumps and bruises," he said. "The really good ones learn to deal with that.
"I'm a big believer that Division I athletes have a responsibility to themselves and to their team to recover. Some people overlook the scholarship and the agreement to do their best to perform for the school. Of course, the most important thing is that they're doing it for themselves."
Stages of recovery
Lowe said determining the extent of a student-athlete's injury is "an art form." He said there is a fine line between an athlete who is pushing too hard and one who is not pushing hard enough to get back. That's where the athletic trainer takes on the role of counselor.
"No one used to talk about the mental aspect," Lowe said. "Athletic trainers have always known it exists, the psyche of the injured and the phases of rejection, anger, frustration, realization and moving on. It's like grieving."
When an athlete suddenly is thrust from the playing field into a long and painful recovery from injury, grieving might be an adequate comparison of what the student-athlete experiences. Pittsburg State University football player Kyle Broyles knows that all too well. During a 1999 game against the University of Northern Colorado, Broyles dislocated his knee. The injury was so threatened his leg that Broyles underwent surgery while the game was still being played. He has had seven more operations since and has just recently returned to school part time.
For Broyles, the road to recovery has been a physical and emotional challenge measured by the increased ability to perform the tasks people take for granted every day. "I miss the little things," he said. "I miss running, which is something I used to hate to do."
In the beginning stages of his rehabilitation, which he described as incredibly painful, Broyles said his main focus was "just getting myself out of bed and into a wheelchair." The daily physical therapy he underwent gradually helped him to regain his strength but did little to heal the emotional toll the injury had taken. For an athlete who said, "I've played football for as long as I can remember," the prospect of never playing again -- let alone never walking quite right -- was an overwhelming emotional blow.
"I was real depressed for a long time," Broyles said. Only through the help of a counselor, did Broyles begin to cope with the severity of his injury and the implications it had for his athletics career. "I never quit thinking I couldn't play," he said. "Maybe it was disbelief. After a while, it sinks in that there is a good possibility I may never play again."
Reaching that conclusion might be the sacrifice Broyles made to keep his leg. For an example of how high the stakes can be, he could look to the University of California, Davis, where football player Sam Paneno dislocated his knee during a 1998 game. The injury resulted in the eventual amputation of part of his leg.
In the year or so since his injury, Broyles has progressed from a wheelchair to crutches to a cane. He continues to work out and work on increasing his range of motion. He even considers returning to the playing field once his recovery is complete. The experience continues to take on new meaning and discovery for him. "It has made me a stronger person," he said. "It has made me realize an education is more important than athletics."
Broyles' experience demonstrates that recovering from injury entails more than physical healing. The Performance Enhancement Group at UC Davis, Paneno's school is based on that premise and looks to treat the whole person by addressing the psychological aspect of recovery.
"It's been a great program for us," said Pam Gill-Fisher, associate director of athletics and senior woman administrator at UC Davis. "We find it expedites getting them back in the game psychologically."
The group was formed when Gill-Fisher was the tennis coach at UC Davis. "While talking with the mother of one of my players," she said, "I expressed my frustration as a coach about losing the connection with injured players."
The mother happened to be the director of sports psychology at JFK University and founder of a program at the University of California, Berkeley, that brought together JFK sports psychology graduate students and injured student-athletes in a support-group atmosphere.
Soon thereafter, the Performance Enhancement Group was born. Injured UC Davis student-athletes and sports psychology graduate students and interns from JFK work with the school's athletic trainers, who help organize and run the weekly sessions.
Jeff Hogan, athletic trainer at UC Davis, has been involved with the group since its inception. "Our main concern is to get the student-athlete through the injury in a healthy way," he said. "We want to make sure they're at peace with themselves and that they're the same person they were before the injury."
To achieve that goal, the interns and student-athletes work on dealing with anxiety and stress about their injuries, as well as maintaining their skills through visualization techniques. "A lot of the group members present and former have felt it's been a connector during that period of time they are recovering," Gill-Fisher said. "We actually have a lot of athletes who are not injured who want to get into it."
Tony Moore, a Performance Enhancement Group graduate, said he has learned ways to stay optimistic about his injury and "not sulk." Moore had been plagued by a severe hamstring pull and joined the group after hearing positive feedback about the group from other members.
Besides learning how to use imagery to work through an injury, Moore said he put together a premeet routine for competition days that helps him relax and "keep myself from worrying about the injury."
Athletes like Moore who have experienced repeated injuries usually experience a gradual decrease in their confidence to heal and succeed in their sport. And in the absence of a group like the Performance Enhancement Group, student-athletes rely on themselves and those around them to heal and get back in the game.
Former Syracuse University football player Darrell Stroope is a veteran of the operating table and the rehabilitation room.
Stroope's first brush with injury came during the fall of his senior year in high school. He tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in what he describes as "the scariest moment of my life." Just months earlier, he had committed to play football for Syracuse. He feared losing his scholarship. But Stroope was quick to learn that at the collegiate level, it's the norm to have an injury, recover and return to action.
It was a theme that played out for the duration of his stay at Syracuse. Stroope separated his shoulder during preseason camp just before the start of his freshman season. He returned home for rehabilitation and a semester of junior college classes.
The second injury spawned the first signs of frustration. "Why the hell is this happening to me?" Stroope asked himself.
In the following years, his knee underwent three more arthroscopes; another ACL tear, complete with quarter-size bone chips and torn cartilage; and one more arthroscope after his graduation in 1999.
"It was frustrating," he said. "Each time it was another little setback. I started to doubt if my body could hold up to it."
Likening each injury to "no worse than an ankle sprain," Stroope continued on with his goal of playing college football. He said he knew deep down he could compete; he just couldn't get his body to agree with him.
In fall 1998, he tore his ACL for the second time. "The moment I did it, I was like 'I'm done,'" he said.
But walking away wasn't that easy. In the days and weeks after, Stroope had to decide for himself if he should continue or call it quits. He talked with family members and his girlfriend. "I think everyone knew that I should hang it up, but no one would say anything," he said.
Strangely enough, as many times as Stroope's teammates saw him injured or rehabilitating, the topic of injury was something rarely discussed. "My teammates would see me on crutches repeatedly," he said, "but no one discussed it because they knew it could have easily been them."
Stroope found himself in a place where many college athletes wind up through no fault of their own -- at the crossroads of life as a college student and life as a college student-athlete. Fortunately for Stroope, he excelled in his biomechanical engineering major and had a solid family structure. He had met his future wife and slowly came to realize that "football wasn't the only thing in my life."
Looking back, Stroope said he credits his numerous returns to the field with a need to prove something to himself, that he could play. He said he simply wanted to catch a touchdown pass during his college career.
He never caught that pass and has since left football behind. He is finishing his master's in bioengineering at Syracuse and has married his college sweetheart. He attends Syracuse home football games as a fan. Though he still carries the reminders of his football career -- he can't quite run or climb stairs too well and rainy days are particularly tough-- he said, "There's a positive side to everything. It took me a long time to find it. But looking back, I can't say I would change anything."
The ability to find a silver lining in the wake of injury might be reserved for a special few, especially if the injury is a life-altering one. For University of Alaska Fairbanks rifle athlete Dan Jordan, an accident away from the shooting range came on the heels of winning a national title. In March 1999, Jordan and his rifle teammates claimed the NCAA crown. Two months later, on May 23, Jordan fell 40 feet while rock climbing and was paralyzed from the waist down.
If it was a tragedy, that's news to Jordan. He said he never went through a depression period or struggled with his situation. In fact, he has maintained an active lifestyle. "I still hunt. I fish. I still shoot," he said. "I'm extremely lucky to be alive. Life is just different now."
Jordan no longer can compete for the Alaska Fairbanks rifle team, but he has remained close to the team and the sport. The year after the accident, Jordan acted as the team statistician, even though the role was sometimes difficult.
"It's tough being on the range, watching them shoot," Jordan said. "I miss road trips. I miss competing."
Fortunately for Jordan, he can still shoot competitively with certain provisions, and he plans to compete in the Paralympics. In the interim, he's finishing up his degree in natural resources management and even coaches the West Valley High School rifle team.
"It's been good to keep my life moving and do what I enjoy," he said. "I think it's all the way you look at it. A lot of people are worse off. You have to learn to appreciate what you have."
In these instances and undoubtedly thousands more, student-athletes prove they are up to the challenges a physically active lifestyle presents. There will be ice bags and ibuprofen, early morning rehab sessions and physical therapy, and even the possibility their careers will come to an abrupt end.
But there also will be a sense of pride and accomplishment at having represented their schools in collegiate athletics competition. The ability to recognize and accept the pros and cons of both realms and strike a balance between the two is testament to the unique and rewarding nature of the student-athlete experience.