“Athletes have this mentality of… ‘push through the pain,’ senior Camilla Dawood said.

Dawood is a softball player at Fraser High School. She has played softball since she was in third grade, and she was first injured in her freshman year of high school.

“I used to have a tear in [a] capsule, and the ligaments supporting the shoulder were weak. Every time a rotation happened; it would roll out,” she explained. Dawood has been dealing with her injury for the past four years of high school, but she has not let that stop her.

Dawood is not alone in her experiences. Over three million students in the United States get injured playing sports every year.

Student athletes are typically the most driven students with the same mentalities as Dawood: “push through the pain.” Walking through the halls at Fraser High School, it is hard to not find someone on crutches or with a limp or in a cast. It is hard to not hear stories about the fracture that a girl got when she was playing volleyball or the concussion that the quarterback got at Friday’s game. Student athletes suffer the physical pain of sports injuries all the time, and they are often afflicted with mental effects as a result.

Junior Elliana Laity is on both the varsity golf and varsity tennis teams. During a powderpuff football game practice, she tore her ACL. She now has to get surgery and has been living with an injured knee for just over a month.

“I’m going to get surgery November third. Then I have to do physical therapy after and try and rebuild my strength. The recovery process is 6-9 months,” Laity said.

This recovery period intersects with Laity’s main sport, tennis. The season, which begins in March, may come too soon. “It makes me sad that I might not play,” Laity said.

This possibility is similar to Dawood’s reality.

“Before I knew everything that happened, I sat out from batting for the entire spring softball season. I was thankfully allowed to still pitch, but not being able to bat really affected my mental health,” she said.

Fraser alumna Molly Neiborg also had to sit out for part of two dance seasons, including her senior season, after breaking both her right and left foot at different times.

“I was out of dance was for 2-3 months,” she said. “I felt like it pushed me back when everyone was moving forward, and I had to go back to the basics to gain the strength again when everyone was ahead of me.”

Junior Hailey Beauchamp, member of Fraser’s golf, basketball, and tennis teams, deviated her septum while playing basketball. She was never forced to sit out for an extended period of time, but her injury still had an impact on her life.

“For a while, I was just suffering without being able to really breathe and get my full oxygen intake [before surgery],” Beauchamp said. “I had to wear a face shield [for the rest of basketball season], and that impacted me because I couldn’t really see what was going on in my peripheral vision. Everyone was laughing at me.”

All four of these athletes had a difficult time adjusting to their lives with their injuries, but they all had the same mindset as Dawood: “push through the pain.” They felt like they had an obligation to themselves and to their teams to get back up.

Dawood is now committed to play softball at Glenn Oaks College, Neiborg dances at Alma College, Beauchamp is training for the new season of basketball, and Laity is prepping for her upcoming surgery.

Despite their achievements and stepping stones, they still have to put in a lot of work.

“With this not having a permanent fix, I have to put more work into my body when I have other things to do, like I could be perfecting on my hitting and pitching, and that’s just another thing that I have to do. So now it’s kind of hard to add on,” Dawood said.

Dawood is not the only one putting in the hard work to recover. “I try not to let it affect my life. I try to live normally with it. However, it does have some negative effects that I can’t control and are unfortunate,” Laity said.

Through their injuries, they have all learned some valuable lessons. They took their negative experiences and made something positive.

Dawood learned to accept more aspects of her life. “Sports aren’t all that you are. You are definitely more. Even if one part of things doesn’t go right, you can fall back on other parts,” she said.

Laity and Beauchamp have always been on the move. Through this injury they learned more about what it was like to slow down. “I would just go go go, where I feel like now, I have to take a step back,” Beauchamp said.

“I learned to not take mobility for granted. Be grateful for what you have,” Laity said.

Neiborg learned how to adjust her mindset. “Never give up, things will get better. I had to overcome a lot of challenges with being out of dance, but you always have to think of the positives and not the negatives,” she said.