Don’t Rub It…

I know it’s been a while, but these last couple years have been a little difficult for me to adjust to and, in turn, that much harder to document.  The biggest reason being that the 2011 Drexel Softball season is just underway, and one thing is hugely different- I’m not in the lineup.  Actually, I’m not even on the roster.  That’s right, I graduated last June, and while I may have literally hung up my cleats (really, they’re on a hook in my closet), giving up the hold I have on my past life has been a whole lot harder.

To be completely honest, the things that I don’t miss about playing college ball far outnumber the ones that I do. I even wrote a song in the tune of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music.  It goes: Wind sprints and bed checks and chin-ups and yelling.  Umpires and bus rides, my whole right arm swelling.  Tarping the field while  dumb freshmen sing.  These are NOT a few of my favorite things…

But, all musical maladies aside, and cliched sentiments to the forefront; being a part of that team made me the person I am today, and I know that is a better, stronger person than the one I was when I first set foot on Vidas Field.  It took me a full year to recognize and appreciate that, and another few months to be comfortable enough to share that insight with anyone.  So, to anyone who comes across this blog, the please read on knowing that there is no malice intended towards anyone mentioned in this blog.  There are only fond memories and genuine appreciation.

[As sort of a final attempt to keep softball in my life (and in perspective), I will continue to write about issues that I think are present in the game today and that could play roles in the future here on this blog.  Once I get up the nerve, I also plan on publishing two posts that wrote later on during my junior season and one I wrote during my senior season that are a little more personal (and maybe a little more self-indulgent than I'm comfortable with) than the other content on my blog.]

On a final note, To all you DUSB ballers-  if any of you happen to be one of those people who come across this, be grateful for what you have because no matter how much it sucks, it is making you a better person and it will all be worth it in the end.

Thank you.

As I sit here watching the Women’s College World Series of softball, I hear the voices of John Kruk, Beth Mowens, and Jessica Mendoza list player’s injuries. Just from the University of Alabama, they talked about Charlotte Morgan and Lauren Parker (pictured below).

Morgan, who wears a boot while not on the field, has been pitching, hitting, and playing first base with a stress fracture in her foot. They also have Lauren Parker who is in the same situation as several of my teammates have been in. She is playing with a torn labrum, awaiting the end of her season when she will have surgery.

Listening to that information being broadcast on ESPN really made me think of my own blog and the reactions I received after I created it. It also made me wonder where other coaches stood in terms dealing with injury and publicizing the impact it has on their teams.

Recently, I read an article by Michael Sokolove that was published in May 11, 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine. It is entitled, The Uneven Playing Field, and it speaks to the escalating rate of injuries to young women in sports.

Many of the comments he received about his article deemed it very interesting and provacative, which illustrates how many people are not aware of this issue.  One mother of a collegiate athlete who suffered from a torn ACL said, “This was a long-overdue article on a subject that needs further study, exploration, and introspection from all of us involved in teen athletics… She [her daughter] was recently cleared to play after a 2007 ACL injury that resulted in physical and mental anguish for the entire family. I pray that years of club and school sports does not result in pain and grief for my daughter down the line.”

Another interesting point brought up by one of the readers, from Durham, NC, speaks a little as to the pressure put on athletes that I had alluded to in my previous posts. He or she commented, ” I think we need to speak to the pressure placed by coaches to play as well. I’ve had coaches at all levels press players to play… because playing injured is just something you do to stand out. Not playing can lead to lost playing time later on, or a belief that the player is not committed to the team.”

Sokolove’s article concentrates more specifically on female soccer players on high school and club teams. Because he focuses on soccer, Anterior Cruciate Ligament, or ACL injuries, also naturally become a focus of his piece.   All of the central girls in the article, playing with ACL injuries, express a determination to play through their pain. They want to dominate at the level they are at and make it on to the next- college. They feel that pressure to push through it from their coaches and parents, but they just as much put it on themselves.

While Sokolove’s article does bring attention to the fact that young women are being injured on the road to becoming college athletes, he does not mention any other women’s sports aside from soccer. The nature of injuries differs from sport to sport, and by focusing only on soccer, he dismisses some other issues.

One of the points that Sokolove makes is that, in soccer, girls are prone to injury when they are younger, before they reach college. That is due to the ways and the amount that they train for their high school and  club teams. Soccer is a contact sport, and so the greater the amount of games that they play, which lessens in college, the higher their chances of inducing injury.

I am not saying that I can speak about many other women’s sports, but I can say that I have not seen the same trends in softball. Read the rest of this entry »

Athletes all run on a certain support system, and one huge part of that system is often overlooked- their trainers.

Athletic trainers work behind the scenes to take care of many athletes who would not be able to perform without them. They put in countless hours of sometimes-thankless work, which naturally lead to stress and “trainer burn-out” in many.

Studies have been done to test just how much stress is put on NCAA-Certified athletic trainers and on how much support they receive in return for their dedication. If you want to see the in-depth study, check out this link:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1323409

Savannah Shanley and Renee Whiskey have been the trainers, respectively, for our team these past two seasons that I have been at Drexel. On top of their sometimes-thankless jobs, both of them are also full-time students, which often adds to the stress and “burn-out.”

One major issue is the time commitment their job requires. Many college teams practice more than once a day and play several games a week. For outdoor sports, like softball, the weather also plays a part in scheduling. It affects where and when we can practice, and our trainers have to be flexible to account for those changes.

On top of the home games and practices, away trips to other schools and others states pull them out of class and sticks them in planes, buses, and hotels- in our case with 17 girls.

Savannah, who worked with the Drexel Field Hockey team earlier this year can recall occasions when her social life was put on the backburner. One of those was during her cousin’s wedding. Because of an unpredictable practice and game schedule (coaches like to keep them that way) she could not even know for sure if she would be able to attend until two days before the big day.

“It’s like you sit there and want to cry but you have all these kids to take care of. So, you just have to sit there and wait for them to win or lose and then you can cry on the ride home” Savannah said of her experiences.

On top of the time they put in, their job is also not an easy one. Savannah and Renee always showed up at the training room and hour before practice to start out treatment, which, with our team, usually took up that entire time.

They ran around taping ankles, wrists, knees, and whatever else needed that extra support for that day. They wrapped shoulders, set up the stim and ultrasound machines. They stretched backs and shoulders, and hamstrings. They also dealt with little, random, ailments that popped up. Basically, they were just busy, and they stayed busy from preseason to post.

“It’s like if you have a Bentley, you still need to change the brakes.” These are the words of the incomparable Renée Whiskey. She is the athletic trainer to the Drexel University softball team and probably the only person who would equate one of us to a car.

There is a lot of truth behind what she is saying if put in the right context. Renée’s comment speaks to the wear and tear on the bodies of athletes. We constantly push our bodies, or “Bentleys,” beyond what they are naturally designed to do. Because of that, the perfection that we strive for is impossible to maintain, and wear and tear are inevitable. Read the rest of this entry »

I know this blog is eventually going to focus more on the issue of injuries in college sports, but I feel like anyone reading this should know a little about the individuals who inspired it into being.

Drexel Softball consists of 17 girls, 3 coaches, and one dedicated athletic trainer, all of whom spend far too much time together over the course of the year. We are one team, but we are also individuals in every sense of the word. We are dedicated, driven, focused, and hardworking. But, we can also be goofy, funny, crazy, and flat-out weird. On top of that, 17 girls together are going to naturally rouse up a good deal of cattiness and drama.

Our dedication and focus stem from a deep-down feeling that, no matter how many times we deny it, we really love what we do- we’re competitors and we want to win. It’s the reason we wake up at the crack of dawn 5 months of the season to lift weights and run suicides in the rain and snow. It’s also the reason we get back on that shuttle after class to go back to practice, why we stay after for extra reps, and then hit the gym for cardio workouts on top of that.

I mean…sure, there would be dire consequences from coach if we didn’t, but we could always quit all together if we really wanted.

Going through all of that together, along with our little quirks, is what gives this team its personality. From Whitney Houston sing-a-longs on bus rides to obnoxious cheers from the dugout to the countless nicknames we give each other (Paste, Champy Champ, Pants, Croddy, Master, Junior, Goose… like I said, countless), we really just are Drexel Softball- there’s no other way to describe us.

There are a few people who get to experience that firsthand every day as well. They definitely deserve a lot of credit for putting up with us and for all of their hard work. We would be nothing without our coaches and trainers who put in just as many, and often more, hours of work than we do.

Together, we all feel the pressure to win (for coach it’s technically her job). If we’re going to put in all that time and effort we want something to show for it- wins. In reality, the numbers and statistics are all that everyone else sees from the outside.

They don’t know everything that I mentioned before, nor do they have the chance to realize the impact that injury has on us. It only adds to the pressure to win and makes it that much more difficult to accomplish.

We constantly have to consider health and weigh if it’s worth risking. We’re constantly torn- players want to play, trainers want us to play, coach definitely wants us to play, but situations have to be assessed and decisions (favorable and not) have to be made.

In the end, we pretty much just have to deal with whatever is decided. Along with that, we deal with it together-whether or not that is a good thing is a different story for another time…

…To end on a lighter note, here’s an example of how weird we are- this is what we created while awaiting our red-eye flight back from California earlier this season:

A couple of weeks ago, we played against Marist College in a tournament. After giving up a 7th inning home run that broke a 1-1 tie, their pitcher Megan Rigos, was pretty upset with herself. She decided to take it our on the very next girl to step up to the plate-Sandi Wambold. Three pitches into the at bat, Megan nailed Sandi right on the elbow, and she nailed her hard.  In Sandi’s words, “The (expletive) (expletive) hit me with a (expletive) pitch, and it really hurt.”

Sandi, pissed off and trying to look tough, chucked her bat, stared Megan down with a nasty look, and proceeded to run down to first base. Halfway there was when the pain really hit her.  When she reached first base, eyes welled with tears; she was greeted by a curt “Don’t rub it” from our base coach.

A week later, after a trip to the emergency room that told her she had been hit directly on the nerve and had a deep bone bruise followed by lots of rehab, we all realized she could have and should have “rubbed it.”

Since then, “Don’t rub it” has become somewhat of an inside joke on our team. However, it does tell some truths of how we think and sort of epitomizes the attitude of our team towards injury. We all, for some reason, feel like we need to be tough and not show when we are in pain and prove that we can play through it.

What results from that mind-set is a very pressure-filled playing environment. We often forget that pain is a physical response and feel the need, again for some reason, to push ourselves past our limits. That is when we get hurt and how injuries worsen.

That pressure comes from teamates, coaches, and we also place it upon ourselves. We all want to succeed and we all want to win. But, is risking health worth a few extra W’s? It really feels like many college athletes and coaches would say yes.