A real pain

When John Draeger spent his summer preparing for another season of Michigan State hockey, he couldn’t have expected to be watching half of his sophomore year from the bench.

As the end of summer approached and the season was in sight, Draeger suffered a lower-body injury that would require surgery and have him sidelined for months. At almost the exact same time, his teammates Matt Berry and Nate Phillips suffered nearly identical injuries.

“It’s been tough,” Draeger said. “It’s been a slow process, especially right coming into the season we had to get surgery really close to the season, so that was definitely tough. But it was good to have those two guys by my side day-in, day-out. You’re away from the team, so it’s good to kind of have a few guys that are with you each day.”

The three underwent surgeries on Sept. 18, and went through rehabilitation and post-surgery training together.

Both Berry and Draeger played their first game of the 2013-14 campaign on Nov. 22, a 2-0 loss to Western Michigan. Phillips is a goaltender and because of the nature of the position, he needed a few more weeks to rehabilitate. He returned to the lineup in Dec. 6’s shootout win against Minnesota.

Draeger said he lost a lot of muscle and strength in his time off, but he said the emotional toll was much worse and Berry repeated the sentiment.

Head coach Tom Anastos said their absence allowed others to step up and fill roles, but it was tougher for the injured players to see the bright side at first. Berry said though it was difficult to watch his team play, he gained an entirely new perspective by watching from the outside and experiencing the sport as a bystander.

“It's a lot different watching games from up above than when you're actually out there in the game,” he said. “You don't see stuff that you would see when you're watching from above. It benefitted me at some aspects of the game, watching from up above and learning different plays and stuff like that.”

        Injuries are a part of sports, and the three Spartans are not an abnormality in collegiate athletics. In their time away from the ice, they learned the difficulties of emotionally dealing with an injury and how to mentally train themselves to get back in the game.

        “It’s definitely difficult to watch, but I mean there was nothing I could really do about it at the time,” Berry said. “So, I just watched and tried to learn from what players were doing out there and read them in case I did get put on a line with them. I just looked at little things out there like what players do and what plays have been working for our team.”

The human psyche

Daniel Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports and an MSU kinesiology professor, has studied sports psychology for about 40 years, including what’s going through the mind of an athlete when they suffer an injury.

Gould said players can go through many emotions, such as denial, anxiety and anger, as they don’t comprehend what is going on with them.

“Sometimes it’s just they miss their sport or might be frustrated from not being able to play,” he said. “They’re not getting better, and it’s frustrating. They feel they’re falling behind their teammates because they’re not playing.”

These have been some of the feelings Draeger went through before returning, and he said mentally dealing with the injury had been the toughest part of his recovery process.

“Missing all those games, not being a part of the team, you kinda feel distant from the team,” he said. “But it's good to be back. I'm really excited ... I'm just kinda amped and you know, always excited to be at practice and always getting here early to get some extra work.”

Depending on the type of injury a player suffers, return dates can vary. But Gould said all it might take for an athlete to feel they’re ready is to take that first body check or slide tackle.

“(The athlete) can be apprehensive about it,” he said. “They may not be confident in (their recovery) as they should until they get some hits or fall.”

Warren Woods-Tower defensive coordinator Al Gulick, a high school football coach for more than 25 years, said he has dealt with any injury an athlete can suffer and the sequential road back to the field.

He said one of the biggest issues he’s seen over the years is players feeling the need to rush back from an injury too soon, and sometimes re-injuring themselves because of it.

“Rushing back just leads to re-injury,” he said. “This season we had a kid try to play too fast after a broken collarbone in the early summer and he re-fractured it and will now miss some wrestling season as well.”

As far as when his players do return from injury, Gulick said he doesn’t see much difference out of them mentally.

Concussed

As athletes become bigger, stronger and faster, so have the sports themselves. They have evolved to a point where players are at a physical peak and playing at a high competitive level.

But with this comes a dangerous side-effect. Players are more susceptible to injuries now than ever before, most notably the increase in concussions and the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in the brain. In concussions, recovery periods are much blurrier than typical injuries.

Ashley Lanzon, an athletic trainer at Utica High School, said she uses a program called ImPACT in dealing with diagnosing concussions, which also is used by the NFL, NHL, MLB and many other sports.

“We give baseline tests to all athletes before the season and if we suspect a concussion during, they have to retake it,” she said. “It’s a series of cognitive tests that would be difficult for a person who is concussed to perform.”

Younger athletes have been proven to be more at risk to concussions. From 1997 to 2007, visits to the emergency room for concussion-related problem from playing youth football, ice hockey, soccer, etc. increased by more than 200 percent for children ages 14 to 19, according to a 2010 study by Hasbro’s Children’s Hospital in Rhode Island.

Because concussions aren’t typical physical injuries, it can be difficult for players to determine when the appropriate time to return is.

“They usually think it’s the end of the world, but I tell them it’s not and that every concussion varies,” Lanzon said. “It’s just about following instructions for recovery and not returning too soon so they aren't out for longer than need be.”