Athletes often face setbacks on their road to success, including injuries that can prevent them from playing their sport or affect their performance.
During practice, junior swimmer Jinyu Zhou misused her leg while doing breaststroke, which led to an injury called breaststroker’s knee, a combination of strain to the medial collateral ligament and compression on the knee, she said.
“I could (still) swim, but it was really painful for my leg,” Zhou said. “My coaches made it so I could practice any stroke except breaststroke.”
She could not go to an upcoming race because the knee injury would affect her other performance doing other strokes, and she didn’t want to worsen her leg injury, Zhou said.
“I was off practice for around three weeks,” Zhou said. “It was kind of hard for me to walk too.”
Taking time off helped the injury gradually improve, Zhou said. While going back into the sport, she consulted with one of her coaches about stretches, she added.
“[Getting back] was a bit difficult because sometimes I would relapse,” Zhou said. “I would start swimming and then the pain would arise all over again.”
Junior Amey Gulati had two injuries during track and field: a knee injury, likely due to bad form, and carpal tunnel syndrome, an injury to his wrist, he said.
“[For] my wrist, I don’t think it was caused by track and field because I got carpal tunnel,” Gulati said. “But I think doing strenuous exercise on my wrist at the same time as getting carpal tunnel was not the best.”
For his knee injury, he took lighter practice for a few days, Gulati said. For the wrist injury, he took around two days off and was feeling better afterward, he added.
“I feel like getting back would have been hard if it affected me more,” Gulati said. “My injury wasn’t as serious as something that would stop me from going to practice longer term. I didn’t really have any problems.”
During football practice, junior linebacker and wide receiver David Jamie fell backward and overextended his wrist, he said.
“My adrenaline took over, and I didn’t feel any pain,” Jamie said. “It was pretty smooth.”
His good friends were a bit sad that he was injured, Jamie said. His friends wanted to see him play and play with him, Jamie added.
“On the day of my injury, I was down about it,” Jamie said. “But I wasn’t too upset about it, but my friends were very sad about it.”
Nothing really changed regarding his performance once he got back into football practice two months after his wrist injury, Jamie said. He kept playing wide receiver once he came back, Jamie added.
“I think in hindsight the experience was fine because for the most part, if you just took care of yourself and not do anything dumb, your experience with your injury won’t really hurt, it’ll just take time to heal,” Jamie said.
For people that really want to play their sport, injuries should not discourage them from playing as long as the injuries are minor, Jamie said.
“Honestly, [injuries] just come,” Jamie said. “[Injuries] are something to expect; you just continue playing the game.”