Preparing For Senior Night, My Last Home Volleyball Game

While working with them it is my desire to mentor and encourage them to strive for greatness in all areas of life, not just in their sport alone. It is my belief that athletics can easily become a student’s identity and when injuries occur many athletes are faced with the question of who they are and where they fit in. In these cases, I believe that I will be able to help them overcome their physical injuries through rehabilitation exercises and therapeutic modalities but I hope to support them through those struggles that are so common among student athletes. All in all, this is my life’s purpose and I hold strongly to the fact that I will begin to see it unfold as I start my graduate studies at Tarleton State University in the fall of

I had always thought that not playing sports because of some injury was a lame excuse for the weak. This thinking was probably due to the fact that I had never gotten a real injury, such as breaking a bone or tearing a ligament. However time after time of getting re injured in the same place weakened that area, now I get injured in those places much more easily than before. Sometimes life just teaches one lessons the hard way. Many people had told me to quit playing with injuries, but I didn’t listen. My brother often told me to stop

This has affected me by making me play even if I’m in a bad condition. One time, I fractured my finger in practice, and when I went to take an X-ray, the doctors said I had to wait for 2 months until I can play again. I told myself that these were the times that would make me different from other people. On the following week, I couldn’t stand watching anymore, so I got the closest tape I could find. I wrapped my fingers together to stop the pain and I started playing. This paid off for me because the coach can now rely on me to stay in the game even if I have the worst

When I broke my Tibia and Fibula playing football my sophomore year of high school, I started to really think about what I wanted to do with my life. I had a lot of love for playing football, and I knew that I did not want to stray too far away from the sport. It wasn’t until I started going to physical therapy that I realized that I didn’t have to, so I decided that I wanted to be a physical therapist, to help other people get back on their feet. However, my junior year, we got a new athletic trainer at my high school. So, I decided to ask Mrs. Pam if she would mind if I shadowed her, to learn more about what she did, and how to help other players with their injuries. She agreed, and I spent my junior and seniors years shadowing her. I learned

It was the aftermath of the Friday night game that I’ve given any signs of an injury, and my family and close ones felt sorrow for me and the following Monday. Throughout my life, peers and elders engraved an image onto me being that sports held a bright future for me, and it will lead to the true path of greatness, and one single injury puts me an aggravating, melancholy rut. Viewing my teammates playing angered me since the injury forced me into a world of therapy for the rest of the season. All the promises I made for myself were undone, athletic scholarships, the path to greatness, and my only school pastime and passion flowed throughout my body and into a pipe dream.

Here I am, my sophomore year in high school, the athletic trainer of the school’s girls’ varsity basketball team. Not even halfway into the season I tear my ACL, remind you I am not a player, I am the trainer. After what seemed like months, I finally have my surgery and I start physical therapy. I sit in the cold waiting room flipping through magazines waiting for my name to be called. I have butterflies in my stomach as I wonder what could possibly behind those large wooden doors. “Kierra Swindall”, they call out. I look

As an experienced runner at the peak of my season, I injured myself in my junior year of high school. I was diagnosed with bilateral tibial stress fractures by my physical therapist. Dedication was shown at its finest. I would run four to five events a meet while in excruciating pain from my knees down. Event after event, I would cry in pain, ice my legs, and thenceforward returned right back to the starting line for the following race. After being forced to terminate my season early in order to rest, my injury exposed me to the reality of the pain that multiple athletes may be experiencing. Generally, the athletes I recognize or hear of are dedicated to their sport. I believe that the worst feeling for an athlete is being told that they cannot participate in a sport they have put a numerous amount of time and effort into. For myself, I cried for days after being taken out of my season early. I realized that I did not wish for any other athlete, let alone another person, to have to cry in disappointment due to an injury that hinders a dream or goal. At that moment I realized what I was called to achieve; I was called to prevent and treat those painful athletic injuries as an athletic trainer and physical therapist. I believe that being an athletic trainer that has experienced the pain caused by dedication, effort, perseverance, and even poor training could cause me to be more relatable to patients that I may have in the

Sport injuries are impossible to avoid. All athletes at one point or another in their life experience some kind of injury. With injuries, they can begin gradually and worsen over time without proper care or they can come on at any given point. Shin splints can easily turn into stress fractures, but anyone in football can get tackled and end up with a broken bone or torn tendon in a matter of seconds. Athletes are known to push through the pain in practices in fear of not being able to compete in the upcoming game.We are so dedicated and passionate to our sport that even the thought of taking time off to heal is far from actually happening until the injury becomes serious. Athletes become hostile when it comes to the physical aspect of the recovery, however they do not put nearly as much time into the

I constantly fought this mental battle of giving in to the temptation of not playing and letting all of my teammates and coaches down, or growing thicker skin and sucking up the pain in order to satisfy the voice in the back of my mind. This period of turmoil seemed to not have an end. Then, as if by miracle, everything changed as I entered my junior year in high school. My knee pains had nearly disappeared, I shed most of the extra weight I had, I even developed my shooting and dribbling to the point where my peers began to notice the drastic “transformation” I went through. That season, I lead my team in points, rebounds, and blocks per game and made it to the semi-finals of the state championship tournament, the furthest the program had gone in four years.

In the summer before my senior year, I tore my ACL while playing a small soccer scrimmage. The doctor explained my injury as very common in female soccer. But the heartbreaking reality made me feel much more than the statistic on the dry erase board that Dr. Mayer held. I loved waking up, going to school, and finishing the day with some type of sports practice! After the incident happened, I cried and whimpered for hours as my leg swelled to the size of a balloon. But the pain was much more than skin and muscle deep. With a post-surgery recovery time of nine months, I realized my high school athletic career had come to an abrupt and expeditious end. I had also ran out of college credits at my small school in the same year. Because of this,

Throughout my junior and senior years of high school I was a part of the Student Athletic Training Team in the Sports Medicine Department of Wakefield High School. To help better understand the injuries that the team encountered in the field, I enrolled in the Sports Medicine classes that were offered by the school. The classes were taught by the head athletic trainer for the school who believed in hands-on learning, especially for his student trainers. During the duration of the course and my time as a member of the team, I saw numerous different types of injuries; but there were three that occurred most often: an ankle sprain, a muscle strain, and a rotator cuff tear.

As a young athlete, running had always been a least favorite past-time for me. Unfortunately, every sport I played was dependent on that very physical act. Millions of suicide runs and lay-ups in basketball, and even more base runs in softball at least distracted me because I was running for a purpose. My short stint on the cross-country team demonstrated to me that I may have excelled at fast-twitch running, but long-distance running was not my forte, made clear by my omnipresent side stitches. My senior year of high school came and to my surprise, running would be the one thing I missed so dearly. My short time as a starting varsity player in basketball came to an end when I completely tore my left ACL. A host of changes came from just one incident.

Sports changes a person physically, but it can also change them mentally. In the beginning of the school year, I was just a freshman, your average athlete, trying to get in shape. Yet the struggle I went through when I had sprained my ankle, I learned to never give up, even in the darkest moment. I healed and became one of the hardest workers on the team, thanks to this great fall. And this is how it began….

Many moments from our youth may fade while other experiences remain vividly embedded in our memories. Perhaps because, like a cut to our skin, an open wound, it takes time to heal. At the start of my sophomore year I was cut from the high school volleyball team I worked so hard to be a part of. All my life I have trained to be the best athlete I could be. I joined volleyball at the age of seven with a goal of being on my high school volleyball team. During sophomore tryouts as the final minutes ticked by the coaches started to call individual people in their office one at a time for cuts and unfortunately I was called. The finality of the coach’s words, ‘you’re not on the team anymore’ filled the room as my world fell apart. The practices, the games, the knee pads, the uniform—was suddenly present but

As our bodies collided mid-air, I couldn’t dictate exactly how I would fall on the rugby pitch that winter day during my freshman year. I landed hard on my right arm as the players over and around me continued the play. As the game drew to a close, the pain in my arm increased. My physician, Dr. Moran, explained what he saw with an easy smile. I had fractured my wrist. As a former college basketball player and orthopedic surgeon, he’d seen this injury many times. As my mind raced with thoughts of how I was going to deal with the injury and school, Dr. Moran remained calm. For him, it was less about the reconstruction of my hand, although it was important, but preserving my livelihood as best as possible after treatment. Even though I struggled