Devastated.

It’s one of the strongest words that can describe an athlete when met with an unexpected injury. All the hopes for success may have been taken away, perhaps temporarily, perhaps for their entire career. It’s something nobody wants, but plenty of athletes experience every season.

The physical injury can have many different effects on athletes; it’s nearly impossible to predict how they will produce after they are back on their feet again.

Sometimes it seems like they are new athletes entirely when they come out of the healing process. Even their mentality can change, like their confidence, or how they play their game, which sometimes can affect some athletes more than the injury itself. “This season I pulled the muscles in my back and neck pretty bad,” Bailey Jacobs said. Jacobs was a member of the Free State diving team this spring. “I overthrew my back when went I went for a gainer during practice. After I messed up my back, it took me about a month to recover, and even longer to not freak out every time I got ready to jump. After awhile I got over it, but I was definitely shook up about it for a bit.”

Athletes like Jacobs play through the injury hurdle, instead of the option of taking the bench while they wait to heal. While it affects their performance, it stands as a better option then doing nothing and sitting out.

“I’d much rather get low scores for bad dives with a hurt back than just sit out and watch everybody else dive and practice,” Jacobs said.

While some sustain injuries they can play through, some have to change their game completely if they want to stay and compete. Brock Norwood, sophomore at Free State, broke his right arm halfway through this spring’s tennis season. Since he wanted to play, the right-hander was forced to play with his left hand. “Obviously my right hand was my dominant hand,” Norwood said. “I was looking forward to finishing this season strong, and it didn’t work out like I wanted. It took me awhile for me to feel comfortable with my left hand, but I guess it did its job after awhile.”

One of the most important factors in both cases was that neither athlete was affected long-term for the injuries they sustained.

While some aren’t as lucky, both athletes realized that things could’ve been worse in their situations.

“I fell during weights class,” laughed Norwood. “I felt stupid for a while, and plenty of my friends at school got a good laugh out of it, but I’m just glad to walk away without a head injury or something worse than a broken arm.”