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Injuries plague snowboarding team |
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Written by Emma Forslund
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Tuesday, 26 January 2010 |
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It was December 12, and a few Grant students were up at the mountain. Senior Will Guitteau was one of the few at Mt. Hood Meadows enjoying a day of snowboarding.
Things changed for Guitteau pretty quickly that day. “I fell off the rail and onto the ice,” Guitteau recalls. At the time he had no idea, but this injury would remove him from the mountain for most of the winter, and cause him pain not only from his now broken collarbone, but from missing out on his senior season of snowboarding.
Snowboarding has a high rate of injuries, about 3–4 times more likely than skiers, ranging from sprained wrists to head trauma. About two months ago, senior Dominic Giulietti suffered the same injury as Guitteau, and even more recently, on January 16, re-broke the same bone. The first break occurred when Giulietti was at the mountain on a Saturday in December: he turned his back and then flipped forward, falling and breaking his collarbone. Now out again because of a re-broken collarbone, Giulietti is waiting to heal and get back up on the slopes.
On January 18, just days after Giulietti suffered second broken collarbone, there was another injury on the mountain. Senior Shaun Nakamine broke his wrist while on the slopes, and surgery is now a possibility for the young athlete who suffered the same break a few years ago.
If you ask Guitteau how he was injured, he’ll tell the gruesome tale of breaking the bone and having sharp edges digging into his muscle, complete with hand gestures demonstrating the fragments digging into each other.
The scars from his surgery are still visible, as are the scars from the metal plate inserted into his bone. The surgery took three hours and took place on the first Tuesday of winter break.
So while Guitteau’s friends and teammates were up at the mountain, Guitteau was in bed for the entire break, frustrated that he couldn’t be with them. Guitteau describes the experience as “f-----g awful.”
With his sling, every day tasks are now strenuous. “Getting dressed is a problem,” Guitteau says. Still, with his painful recovery, Guitteau can’t wait to get back up to the slopes, saying that his favorite thing about snowboarding is that he’s “free to be creative.”
Giulietti has a similar response, saying, “I like it because it’s kind of an escape from the city.”
As both seniors have been snowboarding since a young age, they truly have a love for the mountain, and plan on going to schools that have snowboarding teams. “It’s definitely something I want to find in college,” Guitteau says.
Guitteau hopes to return to the slopes as soon as possible, saying that he’ll be in recovery until March, but still plans to snowboard sooner if possible, staying away from the rails and pipes until he’s completely healed. Guitteau is planning his first trip back up with his surgery scars only weeks old, Giulietti, on the other, hand now has to suffer the recovery process again.
Guitteau still has a long road ahead of him before he’s back to pre-injury condition, but he’s hopeful for the future. Recovery has proved to be difficult but will prove worth it when he can return to the mountain.
Snowboarding isn’t for the faint of heart; it takes a true love of the sport for someone to have this horrible injury happen to them and still be counting down the days until he can get back up to the mountain and try again.
So what is it about this sport that drives these young students to the edge, pushing them to learn the newest trick or have the best run?
Maybe it's the feeling “the whole mountain is yours” that Guitteau feels every time he hits the slopes. He probably won’t change anything about his snowboarding habits once he gets back up to the mountain. These athletes aren’t afraid of injury.If they fall, they get back up and try to do it better.
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