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How about "the sport that got away"... Earlier I wrote about my "Sophie's choice" of sports in high school, wondering what may have been if I ran track instead of playing tennis. Finally I did run track after quitting the tennis team junior year, but I'm afraid I never tried the one event I was born for...
When I joined track I started with hurdles because the coach thought my long legs would be suited for it, and I also did high jump because 1) my friend was a high-jumper, and 2) a very tall and pretty girl did high jump, too. :) Even though my vertical leap was probably strong enough for me to clear 6'6", I never actually cleared more than 5'4" because my form stunk.
Early in the season I strained a hip flexor that prevented me from running hurdles so I moved to the distance events, finding that I most enjoyed the 400m and 800m races. By the end of senior year I was a decent 400m runner - my PR was 60 seconds. My dad watched one of my last track meets and afterwards he was reminiscing about his days as a high school track star, where he set (and still holds, I believe) the long jump record for his high school at something over 20 feet!
After the season one weekend I jogged from my house to school (about 4 miles), noticed the long jump pit and thought, hey, I should try this. I sprinted down the runway and took off - it felt good! Stepping off the distance, I estimated that I soared 17 feet! The best guys on my track team were jumping 17-18 feet, the state champ was doing 24', and this was just my first attempt. As it were, it was also my last.
Alas, what could've been? Had I started long jumping right off the bat, I might have been winning a few meets and who knows, perhaps I could've competed at the state championships just like my dad had done. Maybe I could've topped his "family record", too! With my dad's genes, was I born for long jump? I guess I'll never know, but clearly I let the opportunity get away.
A trophy. I was 14 years old and had won "most improved player of the year". It altered the course of my athletic career forever...
In 8th grade I participated in three sports: baseball, track, and tennis.
Baseball
I had played baseball since 2nd grade and enjoyed it, but was never great at it. This was partly due to poor eyesight because once I got glasses in 7th grade, my hitting instantly went from horrible to decent. I had no power but good plate discipline, culminating in an 8th grade season where I batted .670 with a .750 on-base percentage but just one extra-base hit (a bloop double). My coach batted me at the bottom of the lineup despite my stats (I was the only one who kept stats, anyway, being a nerd) because he never realized how effective I was. I tried to explain to him that my singles were almost as good as doubles because being the fastest runner on the team, I stole 2nd base every time and often 3rd base, too, without getting caught. He was a great coach and he liked me, but didn't appreciate a hitter without power.
Track
Even though I generally liked running, I never tried track and field until 8th grade. Being a late bloomer I wasn't a standout by any means, but I was still pretty good. I ran mostly distances of 100m-400m and my highlight was running the first leg of our championship-winning 4x100 relay, keeping pace with other team's fastest runners. It was a bit frustrating that I wasn't good enough to win any races on my own, but a few of my friends were on the track team and the camaraderie was outstanding. That was some of the most fun in a sport I'd ever experienced.
Tennis
I started taking lessons in 7th grade at a local athletic club in the beginner's group. Non-beginners, my best friend among them, played in class-type practice sessions ranked by ability, "Group 3" being the worst and "Group 1" being the best. My friend had been playing for several years and finally got promoted from Group 3 to Group 2 and was proud of it. Apparently I took quite well to the sport because after half a year in the beginner's group the coaches jumped me straight into Group 2, making my friend a bit envious. And for that I won a little trophy as the club's most improved player of 1990.
Entering high school the following year, I was faced with a mild version of Sophie's Choice: all three of my sports took place in the same season, forcing me to choose only one that I could continue pursuing. I enjoyed all three sports immensely - the drama of baseball, the excitement of track, the intensity of tennis - and because of that trophy, I chose tennis.
Tennis was the only sport where I felt that my achievements were recognized, a feeling given to me simply by that trophy. I never was awarded "most improved hitter" when I got glasses or a "most promising runner" when I held my own in the relay. It's kinda sad that such praise was so important to me, but that's who I was back then.
The epilogue here is that I played tennis for just three more years, making varsity as a sophomore on a top-ranked team but quitting in my junior year after becoming exasperated with a holier-than-thou coach and teammates who were more concerned with being better than each other than actually winning meets against other schools. Luckily for my parents' wallet it only took one expensive broken racquet to realize the error of my choice. :)
I never played baseball again, but I did play in a rec softball game between the two 11th grade chemistry classes where I happened to have a great day outplaying everyone including a handful varsity baseball players in chemistry class. The chemistry teacher was also a baseball coach and asked me several times "Why aren't you playing baseball?" Sometimes I wondered that myself but...
After quitting tennis I joined the track team because my good friend Jamey ran track. I went from being the best runner on the tennis team to the worst runner on the track team; however, I was setting PRs (personal records) every race I ran. By senior year I was an average runner yet still PR-ing every race, prompting my track coach to give me one of the best compliments I ever received in high school: "Someday you'll be winning master's races."
Ironic, isn't it? I chose tennis because of the accolades it gave me, but never found any respect in the sport again while the two sports I had cast off ultimately gave me the recognition that I craved. Nowadays I'm an active softball player and distance runner, but I haven't touched a tennis racquet since college. I guess I should've followed my own heart rather than the mouths of other people, or at least the words they etch onto little trophies.
I went to my PT appointment this morning and if it weren't for the fact that I'm there due to an injury, I'd love to go more often! Seriously, it felt like I went to a museum or something - it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. They even had all kinds of sports items - posters, pennants, even mock lockers for Steve Yzerman, Derek Jeter and Mia Hamm! My exam room had an autographed Jeter photo, photos of Tony Clark and Alan Trammell in action, and a "timeline of baseball history" poster. Awesome!
FYI, I have two injuries - a bad right shoulder that's been bothering me for a few years, and also a strained rib cage that I hurt six weeks ago. This PT appointment addressed the shoulder; there's not much that can be done for the rib cage aside from rest.
The therapist started by asking a ton of questions, then started prodding me all over on my back. She did mention that my back appears to be unaffected from my rib cage strain, so that's good. Then she hits my right shoulder and says "Whoa, there's quite a knot back there!" That was news to me; I'd never noticed anything like that. Next I had to move my arms around in various directions with the palm of my hand facing one way, then another, etc. Some of those motions caused a clicking sound in my shoulder, which I expected - it happens quite frequently. The last step in her diagnosis was for me to push against her hand with my arms in various orientations, e.g. push outwards one way, push down another way, push up yet another way, etc. One such configuration resulting in my arm shaking as I pushed up with very little force, although I didn't feel any pain.
At last, a diagnosis. We walked over to a wall chart depicting all of the muscle groups and she pointed out one in particular - the infraspinatus. That's the one that was all knotted up. She concluded that I don't have any tearing or significant damage to the muscle - sweet! The problem is that the muscle is quite inflamed, especially around that knot and especially where it connects to my upper arm bone (the humerus), which is where I can actually feel some pain if I push on that area.
The problem is that the inflamed muscle doesn't behave properly - when flexing the inflammation apparently weakens it and disrupts some of the nerves trying to control it. See how many muscles connect to the shoulder? It's a complex joint, so when one is out of whack and the shoulder moves, certain motions can be rather uncoordinated and cause the clicks that I sometimes feel.
The solution? Ultrasound! Seriously, the therapist wheeled an ultrasound machine into the room, set the timer to eight minutes, and proceed to rub the wand around on the back of my shoulder. She explained that the ultrasound warms up and relaxes the tissue. It worked! After the eight minutes she confirmed that the knot in my shoulder was gone. Wow.
Next I had to sit in a chair parallel to a table and rest my right elbow on the table next to me with my hand raised as if I were doing a casual wave. She then pressed her fingertips into that infraspinatus muscle and leaned into it so hard that she nearly pushed me out of my chair! While she's doing that, she asks me to raise and lower my hand a dozen times... dang did that hurt! Not sharp pain, but rather it felt like my shoulder was full of lactic acid. After I'd completed the dozen reps my hand was all tingly and pale white - it felt really weird. And I was done!
I'm scheduled to go back next week, and then 2-3 times per week after that for 3-4 weeks. I don't know exactly what they're going to do, but I assuming something similar to today. I was also given a few simple exercises to do daily. Amazingly, the entire day my shoulder has felt all limber! I guess I never realized such tightness had formed but boy that ultrasound must've done something. I still get the clicking, so I need to build that muscle back up to strength before that will go away.
How did this injury happen, anyway? Well, I used to be a fairly serious tennis player back in high school - the strongest aspects to my game were my uncanny quickness (rarely is the tallest guy on the team also the quickest, but somehow I did it) and my booming serve. I loved serving and practiced it often, even throughout college as a way to burn some energy. I also played rec softball in college. Needless to say, my right shoulder must've been pretty well developed.
Then I stopped. For several years I played neither tennis nor softball, then a couple years ago I started playing softball again. My mind remembered how to throw a ball hard, but my muscles didn't and over time my now under-developed shoulder muscles couldn't keep up with the expectations I was putting on them, and one became inflamed. Hopefully after all of this PT has run its course my arm will be strong enough again to hurl a softball a couple hundred feet again, without injury!