A Look Back

Now it is December of '09, well over a year since surgery, and looking back, things could barely have gone better.

In April I began to attend Sockeye's pre-tryout scrimmages and track workouts, performing relatively well (surprisingly, the skill differential at the scrimmages was vast-- kids showed up without shoes! Literally didn't play in shoes- barefoot- to a supposed tryout scrimmage. Hard for anyone to shine beyond a single big play or two with skill levels so disparate).

In May came the Combine, a one-day event with warm-ups, drills, games, performance metrics tests including the 40yd dash, 3 cone-drill, and vertical leap tests, and conditioning (not necessarily in that order). By my 2nd game, my patellar tendon began hurting, and by the 3rd game it was affecting me drastically. Essentially, the patellar tendon was starting to hurt badly enough, and was being injured to the extent that it began to not fire at all, and other muscles (or my other leg altogether) had to compensate. I looked ridiculous, running and turning off only one leg (it was more like I had a pegleg or something). I had to sit out conditioning, which was too bad because I actually enjoy that type of group-based endurance workout.

Luckily I made it past that round into the second round. This was where frustration really set in, since I had to wait 2 weeks for my patellar tendon to heal. Sitting out tryouts - just having to watch while everyone does track, practices, etc - was extremely difficult. Sitting out due to injury in general is a very lonely/ostracizing thing, especially without an outwardly present injury (if I'd had a boot, or a cast, somehow it would have been slightly better as a visual cue as to why I'm not practicing). In any case, I slowly got back into playing by doing what I could at pod practices or tracks and backing off when pain set in. After 2.5 weeks I was fine again.

Then came the real crux of the tryout process, Cal States. From what the other tryouts (and current Sockeye players who'd gone through the process recently) told me, your Cal States performance would make or break your tryout. I went in feeling good. I talked to Danny Karlinsky about his tryout the year before, which essentially came down to a solid tryout process followed by a Cal States FULL of drops. Straight drops. He said he laughed by the end when he doinked an in-cut because it had just become humorous at that point, beyond frustration or disappointment.

So, of course, I drop two easy catches in the first game. I was somewhat nervous, and drank coffee/ate clif espresso shots to overcome my nerves. This is definitely a habit of mine- nervousness leading to caffeine intake. Usually helps a ton, this time it was simply too much and I was jittery. The first was a cross-field blade from MC to me in the goal, essentially thrown instead of a hammer because my man was poaching off of me to the open-front side. It wsa shifty, there was a breeze, but I should've caught it and it zipped through my clap-catching hands. Shit.

Later, I break free downfield after Kurt Gibson gets a solid yardage gaining in-cut, and straight drop his perfect flick huck. Again, it was a bit breezy, and the disc bounced just before it got to me, causing me to raise my clap-catch higher, thereby causing my hands to not clap together but slightly off and having the disc bobble out. Fun side-story: my girlfriend, who had made Riot the year before, and much of the rest of Riot were watching this game. They loved me, since I played cameraman/supporter/consoler at their Nationals the year previous, staying with them in their condo. They'd seen me drop the first pass in the far endzone, and this pass I was catching ("catching") was in the endzone just in front of them. Drew Johnson said just as I was catching (dropping) the pass, and I quote, "Don't drop it!" Thanks Drew. They all hushed in silence when I did drop it, and looked away like guilty children, not wanting to bear witness to my crumbling.

Luckily I didn't crumble, and went on to get a layout D on their best handler to get a crucial break on the point before game point. MC even came up and told me it was a big-time block, which felt good.

The rest of Saturday went well, some slight patellar tendon soreness but nothing debilitating. OH- I did forget about this though. I had a terrible, disgusting ingrown toenail. Easily one of the most debilitating injuries I've ever had, since it is something you can play through but hurts consistently and A LOT. It had reached crescendo levels at this point, with strange green and yellow goo mixed with blood coming out of it and staining my socks. Easily up there with worst injuries ever.

Sunday, of course, I had another drop, this time on a more excusable play. Against the "other" Portland team, Pryzbilla/Chico's Bail Bonds/whatever, I skied for a huck over a quickly advancing defender (it hung a bit, I had to wait fr it to go up), and doinked it. This is a pass I don't doink, so it was most certainly a drop. This one made me feel the worst actually, because it freaked me out into thinking "Am I a dropper? Do I dorp passes now? Am I not clutch? What is wrong with me?" It was bad.

Going forward though, I did play well. We had to play our own Sockeye X team, and from what I found out later, my defense against Ben was what solidified my place on the team. He said I made him work harder than any defender had recently, which felt good to hear. No huge plays that I remember from that game, except that some people had some bad turns, and that Julian Childs-Walker is going to be a beast in college.

The finals against Revolver was fun. I got a "block" when the thrower's fake accidentally slipped out of his hand and hit my hand. I also made what was easily my best catch since the injury (and one of my better catches of all time, given the crucial timing, mid-Sockeye-tryout), when I button-hooked an endzone cut for Spencer Wallis and he gunned a forehand to the open side, forcing me to layout big up high and forward and catch it with my left hand (with the disc trying to spin out of my hand as it was a forehand). Funny enough, the tryout committee members didn't actually see this play because they had huddled to chat about something. Oh well.

This post has devolved into talking about the season, so i will re-group a bit and save that information for a later post, if ever.

My explosiveness was coming back, and to guage when it was fully back became difficult because of our training. We were doing a lot of hard lifting/track workouts, and I always felt like any gains that we were making would only show up once we tapered. This proved to be very much the case, as we all felt quite sluggish until about Labor Day/Sectionals, and I easily felt better at Sectionals than I had felt since my injury. In fact, I felt more explosive/quicker than I think I was before the injury, and even then I was working quite hard.

Sectionals/Regionals went extremely well (personally), and Nationals also went well, although I don't think we were perfectly honed come Nationals. Sometihng felt off. The extended lull between Regionals and Nationals (because of the early Regionals) felt strange and too long.

Nationals itself was a blur. I played relatively well. However, on a freak play in the quarters, while marking Rory from Doublwide, he threw a big backhand huck and on his follow through, his backhand hit my extending right hand (trying to block) and broke the 4th metatarsal. I felt/heard it break, but just couldn't believe that that had broken my hand, so I continued playing the point. We got the turn, worked it up field, and I caught a dump pass outside our upwind endzone. Upon assuming a backhand grip, I meediately knew I couldn't throw as it hurt quite badly. After that I sat out the rest of the tournament, except for one point in which i got burned upline since I was totally not ready to play after stangating on the sideline for 30 minutes.

What were the biggest difference-makers in terms of recovery? By far it was the strength of my quads. When I worked hard to make them strong, I had no problems, but any time my focus and training on them diminished, the patellar tendon sounded its fury.

Beyond that, patience. Knowing that I would get better was hard to remember. You recover so slowly, yet have to focus on what you do day-in and day-out that the daily focus does not sync well with the long-term goal. While recovering, my progress and status was almost all I could talk about with my girlfriend, it took up that much of my mental capacity. Without that much focus I don't think I would've recovered as well. She got real annoyed, but hey, that's the way it goes.

So, to conclude, I hope this blog can be helpful for other people going through ACL surgery/rehab/recovery. I wrote it because I found another blog similarly helpful and felt that enough ultimate players tear their ACLs that this could be a good, sport-specific comparison tool. Feel free to contact me, I enjoy talking about it.

Tyler