Basketball Comeback
Leg injuries are some of the most difficult sports injuries. It’s even harder when a basketball player suffers a leg injury that requires two invasive surgeries in a week, or when a player has major injuries to both knees in one year.
Senior Joseph Enderlin was at basketball practice last October when it happened. He went up for a layup and proceeded to land awkwardly against the wall. He had broken his leg and completely dislocated his ankle. Joseph said his first thought when he looked down at his bone sticking out of his leg was, “Well, there goes my season.”
After two invasive surgeries and another non-invasive surgery in eight days, he went to rehab for five months. Enderlin said, “The hardest part of rehab was that I basically had to re-learn how to use my ankle.”
About those eight days in the hospital Joseph said “They were truly terrible, I was in an enormous amount of pain.”
Junior Austin Alsbrook who went to see Joseph in the hospital, said, “He looked like he was in a lot of pain, but I think he was pretty loopy due to the painkillers.”
Joseph ended up missing about two weeks of school due to his injury because he couldn’t move out of bed. Joseph worked tirelessly to get ready and be back for his senior season of basketball after the doctor told him that he may never walk again. He made it back to the court for all of the basketball team’s summer games, but towards the end of the summer suffered a dislocated shoulder and later a torn labrum, which required surgery. He hopes to be back on the court and fully healthy around December.
Senior Duncan Diaz suffered a nasty PCL sprain in his right knee during a summer football practice before his junior year. This caused him to miss all of football season and all of off-season basketball. He had made it back to the basketball court in mid-December but in his first full game back he tore his ACL in his left knee. “I had surgery on my ACL which caused me to miss all of my junior season.” said Diaz. He went to rehab and got back on the court for practice starting in June. Duncan said, “The hardest thing about a major injury was wondering if there was anything I could have done not to get hurt in the first place.”
He said another problem he had was “waiting until I was 100% to get back and start playing.” Alsbrook said of Diaz’s injury, “It was really difficult to see him work his way back after the first injury, only to suffer an even worse one on the other knee. I was really sad for Duncan because it cost him his whole season.”
Enderlin talked about the season. He said, “I just want to be able to be back at full speed and hopefully win a lot of basketball games this season.”
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