Park gymnastics team has only been practicing for a little over a month and has already had three of their players get injured at practice.
According to head coach Dawn Thielen, the players’ injuries can’t just be attributed to gymnastics, but overwork from other sports.
“A lot of our girls play multiple sports with a lot of shin splints, so if you’re a tri-sport athlete who’s coming off of track or soccer you come into gymnastics, you have done a lot of running, (and) that’s a lot of overuse,” Thielen said. “Plus, you add in a lot of those hard landings, which leads them to get more aggravated, so we have a lot of those.”
According to junior Dominica Mora Zengel, the team is working to find ways to limit these injuries, like visiting Park’s athletic trainer.
“We are trying to promote going to Josh, but we all know he’ll tell you to stop playing which we don’t really like,” Dominica said. “Going to Josh and talking to the coaches helps because communication is key. If you tell the coaches you’re hurt they’ll be okay with it.”
According to junior captain Abigail Oppegaard, the team is upset with the early injuries due to its impact on morale and performance.
“It’s definitely a bit demoralizing because it’s sad to be in the gym and see all your friends not being able to compete,” Oppegaard said. “It’s not good for our scores to have many of our athletes not able to compete.”
Thielen said the team has been able to push through the early challenges and they are working with professionals on trying to prevent them.
“This team has done really well when we have something like that (a torn acl) happen, we’ve had injuries happen the last two meets right before it starts,” Thielen said. “We’re working with the strength and conditioning coach on what we need to strengthen, we’re working with Josh to figure it out as well.”
Mora Zengel said she hopes the team is able to have more medical supplies.
“(We’re) trying to get better medical equipment, I really want to get more neosporin because we don’t have any right now, ” Mora Zengel said. “We’re trying to find better ice packs because the ones that we have right now don’t work.”
Oppegaard said injuries are just a part of the sport and they have to move past it.
“Everybody gets a little hurt in gymnastics, that’s just the name of the game, that’s kind of just how it goes,” Oppegaard said.” I would say that gymnasts are very resilient people in that sense.”
Park gymnastics next meet is 11 a.m. Jan. 6 at Park Center.
