Soccer Injuries-Part 1

People familiar with soccer know that it is a contact sport that can be hard on the body. Besides the running, jumping, quick starts and stops, there is also contusions, twists, sprains, and bruises. I had been pretty lucky throughout my soccer playing days. Sure when I was a kid, I had the two broken wrists as I described earlier. And I had my share of ankle sprains, groin pulls, and sore hamstrings. But I had never had any major injuries in the many years I played.

My first major injury happened as an adult playing in the CVSA. Our team captain was a member of the CVSA board which lead to a neat opportunity. There was a British Navy ship that was going to be docking in nearby Hampton. The men of the HMS Richmond wanted to play a soccer game against a local amateur team. Our captain, Mario, was able to get the Galaxy onto the pitch for a friendly.

The game was set for a Saturday at Bryan Park. There were more spectators than usual at this game. My dad had come into town to watch and there were various family and friends from both teams at the game. The match was really a fun one. I thought I had a pretty good game with an assist and a goal.

During the course of the game, I had a breakaway. I was driving down into the penalty box and was leveled by an opposing player. The referee decided it was not a foul but upon video review (the game was being taped), it was definitely a foul. When I went down, I landed on my hand and hurt my thumb pretty bad. I kept playing though. Soccer players are like that. We just keep playing and deal with the injuries after the game.

We ended up winning 4-3 and afterwards we all hung out in the pavilion to socialize. I was not in a socializing mood though because my thumb was throbbing and was black and blue. I put ice on it and did not hang out much. My dad and I went home and he left to go back to NOVA. Now I know that immediate black and blue from an injury is not a good sign.

The next day my thumb was still hurting a great deal. I decided I better go to the Patients First to get it checked out. Melissa was out of town at a conference so she was missing all the fun. At Patients First, they did an xray and said that I had broken my thumb and sent me to a specialist. So the next day I went to Advanced Orthopedics (my second time at AO). The doctor informed me that I needed surgery. He also told me that since he was going on vacation later in the week that he would need to fit me in the next morning.

So I had injured myself on Saturday, went to one doctor on Sunday, the specialist on Monday, and was being operated on Tuesday. The surgery was relatively minor but any surgery takes its toll on the body. I had what was called a "game keepers repair." I had a co-worker drive me to surgery and pick me up when it was done. I was sent home with pain medicine and a soft cast.

It was challenging doing things with one hand especially since I had hurt my dominant hand. I went back to Advanced Orthopedic for physical therapy. The therapy went well and I regained almost a full range of motion. Not 100 percent though. I can still bend my left thumb much more than the right one that I injured.

Next time I will describe another injury that is more typical of athletes.

Welcome to my Blog

Everyone else is doing it so why not me? While this may not be the best reason to create a blog, I have had some fun recently reading some family blogs and thought this might be a good vehicle for me to express myself and maybe even contribute to my self actualization. (See Maslow's hierarchy of needs).

Mostly I would like to write about my life as an amateur athlete. I see this blog as an opportunity to share some of my experiences with friends and family, talk about what motivates me, share training plans, and discuss my goals as they pertain to exercise and health. Of course I may stray from the main topic here and there I am sure. I am hoping that this blog will be another tool to motivate and focus my energy on the things that I find interesting and important in my life. Also my wife recently said she was going to start a blog about her new bee keeping endeavor so I had to beat her to it. So here I go.

I have been reading the blog at http://quackenblogger.blogspot.com/ and think he is doing a pretty good job. So like him, I will start off with a little background on me and my life in athletics.

When I was a young boy, I started playing soccer. Back then, in my hometown of Vienna, VA, a child could start playing organized soccer when he or she was 8. That is quite old by today's standards. I started kicking the ball around and playing backyard soccer at an earlier age but 8 is when I officially played on a team with jerseys, practices, refereed games, etc. We had soccer moms then but they did not call them that. We called them "the team mother." She was responsible for the snacks of course, as well as organizing transportation, phone trees, etc. But I digress.

I loved to run and had lots of energy to burn so soccer was a good sport for me. Soccer players run a lot during the game. I also had some amount of skill as I had two older brothers who had both been playing for a couple of years before me. When you play backyard soccer with older boys, you have to learn fast or you never really have any fun.

Also I took my Dad's advice. You see my Dad never played soccer. Soccer was not a popular sport in Iowa. They played football and wrestled. That is what my Dad did when he was young. But one day my Dad must have gotten bitten by the soccer bug. So he encouraged us to play and one thing he suggested was that I kick the soccer ball against the wall. So much like a tennis player who hits the ball against a wall, I started kicking the ball against the wall. Boom, Boom, Boom. The whole house probably shook. My mother must have done a good job of ignoring the pounding because she never once complained. Hey, at least we were outside right?

As I got older and continued to play, my brothers and I would play two-square with our feet. It was a great game that really helped contribute to our timing and control of the ball. Soon we would have all the other soccer players in the neighborhood playing 2 square in our driveway. I won't go into the details of how we played but I do plan to post a demo video here one day. Perhaps over the Christmas break, we can get an old fashion game of two square going.

Another thing my Dad did to help us play and enjoy soccer was to help make it all happen. He did a little coaching and that was not to be forgotten. But it was really his work as commissioner that really made things happen. You might be surprised at all the work that is necessary to keep a youth soccer program going. I won't bore you with the details here but needless to say, it is a lot of work. I helped him when possible. The late night chalk deliveries to the fields were always fun. I look back on those times and think how lucky I am to have a Dad that gave so much of his time to youth soccer. And those late night chalk deliveries were also great bonding moments between my dad and me.

So onward went my soccer career. I continued playing youth soccer and progressed into playing in high school. My school did not have a strong soccer program. For whatever reason, Marshall did not fare to well in the district. That is, not until Coach Carl came along and turned us around. We managed to make it all the way to the District Final during my senior year.

While playing soccer in high school, I also did about 2 seasons of wrestling. Again this was my Dad's idea and I thank him for it. I learned a lot about pushing my body to the limit. I learned about determination and I also learned that I was pretty weak and not the best wrestler. After about 2 seasons, my winter workouts changed from wrestling to a new sport- indoor soccer. Indoor is fast and furious and I had great fun playing it. Indoor kept us in shape for the Spring season and kept us from getting rusty.

Now since I really want to focus on exercise, I must detail our workouts for soccer during high school. During the season, we would start off each practice with a 5 mile run around the track. That was 20 boring laps. I made it bearable by carrying my Sony Walkman and listening to tapes as I ran. This was long before the CD player and the iPod was still 20 years off.

After our 5 mile run, we would have the standard practice. Then after practice we would run what we called "wind sprints." We would do 50 to 100 yard sprints. I can't remember how many we had to do but it was at least half a dozen. No matter how we played, we were not going to lose because we were out of shape.

Well that about wraps it up for now. Look for my next entry when I talk about the college years. Thanks for reading.