Bad timing for a bad injury

Very long story short, DD has a torn meniscus and LCL.

There's never a good time to tear up a knee, but as an uncommitted 2020, the timing is most unfortunate. Surgery isn't scheduled yet, but the anticipated best case has her out of all sports for probably 9 months.

Apart from getting ready for the SAT, what are some things I should be encouraging her to do with respect to her recruiting journey as she navigates through this medical setback?

Sorry to hear about the injury. Unfortunately, I don't have too much to offer other than my empathy. My own daughter was just cleared to resume softball activity following rehab on a non-surgical partial ACL/PCL tear, but she is already in college so there wasn't a recruiting impact (whether there is a "depth chart" impact remains to be seen, I guess). Best advice is to focus on the repair and rehab process, keep target schools updated on progress, and take advantage of the softball downtime to make the academic side of recruiting as solid as possible. I hope all goes smoothly.

Momo'sDad said:

Very long story short, DD has a torn meniscus and LCL.

There's never a good time to tear up a knee, but as an uncommitted 2020, the timing is most unfortunate. Surgery isn't scheduled yet, but the anticipated best case has her out of all sports for probably 9 months.

Apart from getting ready for the SAT, what are some things I should be encouraging her to do with respect to her recruiting journey as she navigates through this medical setback?

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Sorry to hear about the injury. That sucks.

Not sure how far you along in the choosing colleges process, but there is a lot you can get into on the choosing the college of the decision without softball considerations.

- Go do the college admissions tours if you haven't already. Get onto the campuses. Does she have the 'ideal college profile' for her already. My DD"s college list changed dramatically after a few tours and visits to various campuses.
- Take the time to understand the admission policies of the colleges she is interested in. Even with the "softball in", they can be weirdly complicated and unique
- Academics... time to take a challenging class that maybe she coudln't take due to time on softball. These impress admissions. Several schools valued the academic classes taken over the grades the student gets
- Updates to coaches become more of progress on rehab and when you expect to be back on the field. Still door knocking and touching base

Lastly - this is a chance to be a workout warrior... well once surgery and swelling has gone down. While you need to be careful through the rehab process with pushing the leg too far, but now is a huge opportunity to spend a lot of time in the gym working to build up core strength and upper body strength.

Sorry to hear about your DD's injury. My DD had acl and meniscus surgery at the end of last year so know what your going through. We tried to just keep it as positive as we could. As others have mentioned it's a chance to focus on some things that she may not have taken as much time on otherwise. The first couple weeks were the worst for my DD until she could really get in the weight room. In the end, the rehab was shorter than we thought it would be, she studied and prepared better for the ACT than she probably would have and she came out of the weight room much stronger than before the injury.
As far as recruiting, we let coaches know what had happened and that she would be starting the season limited. None of the coaches that came and watched her seemed concerned about the injury. To me showing a coach your ability to overcome adversity with a situation like this can be a positive.

Thank you for much for the counsel, gentlemen. What's interesting to me is that she still wants to do multiple campus visits before she's healthy again. I'm holding her off on that for now, but I suppose it could be ok once she's off crutches.

I'm extremely sorry to hear the news [MENTION=3342]Momo'sDad[/MENTION]. I'm not trying to dissuade you from the college recruiting process, but now might be a good time to look at colleges that she might want to attend should she not be able to, or want to play SB for. There are many on here that would counsel, such as myself, that playing SB is icing on the cake and maybe she should look at colleges where she could make the team as a walk-on and go for AS money her second year. I would recommend taking this time off and using it to bolster her academic prowess by getting her SAT/ACT prep classes/tutoring and looking at colleges she may never have considered before.JMHO You never know how things will turn out.

TMD said:

Sorry to hear about the injury. Unfortunately, I don't have too much to offer other than my empathy. My own daughter was just cleared to resume softball activity following rehab on a non-surgical partial ACL/PCL tear, but she is already in college so there wasn't a recruiting impact (whether there is a "depth chart" impact remains to be seen, I guess). Best advice is to focus on the repair and rehab process, keep target schools updated on progress, and take advantage of the softball downtime to make the academic side of recruiting as solid as possible. I hope all goes smoothly.

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TMD, sorry to hear about your DD's injury but glad she is cleared to play. My knucklehead is studying in Ireland for a semester and is talking about joining Trinity's rugby team.

Andy

AndyS said:

TMD, sorry to hear about your DD's injury but glad she is cleared to play. My knucklehead is studying in Ireland for a semester and is talking about joining Trinity's rugby team.

Andy

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Thanks Andy. Hope your daughter has a great semester in Ireland....but rugby?? No thanks.