One of the risks of participating in a sport is the pressure and toll it takes on an individual’s body. While performing a trick during a football game’s halftime show, Senior Delanne Breuer, had a misfortune injury that put her senior season to a halt.
Breuer relives the moment when the injury occurred during her second performance of the season.
“We were playing Blue Valley and I did a front aerial and I landed on the side of my ankle and dislocated my knee. I couldn’t feel anything so I tried to get up and then I couldn’t get up. I thought my leg was snapped in half,” said Breuer.
Senior Mackynzie Jones continued to perform knowing there was a mishap in Breuer’s trick but was unaware of the injury that occurred at the moment.
“She usually is the one person on the team that gets up if she is injured. If she rolled her ankle she usually gets up and continues dancing through the pain and that’s why I stepped over her because I thought she was getting back up but when I got finished with my tuck I looked back and she wasn’t back up,” said Jones.
The prowlers have been trained in what to do when there are technical difficulties or mistakes during a performance to maintain professionalism, but Jones explains how the conversation of a dancer being hurt is avoided.
“We don’t really get trained about injuries because we don’t really want to think about them happening and they don’t really happen all the time. Delanee’s was the first injury that’s been really bad to the point where we had to stop the dance my whole four years on prowlers,” said Jones.
Serious injuries can leave athletes in hesitation in continuing to sport out of fear that something could go wrong again. Breuer hopes that she doesn’t limit her full potential after recovery.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily performing but I think doing tricks and hard flips that I learn on my left leg I’ll have hesitation doing just mentally,” said Breuer.
Seeing a teammate get injured can impact the team and put a fear on what could happen to any of the athletes. Jones has sympathy for one of her teammates that has gone through an injury similar to Breuers’.
“Definitely Paisley Park because last year she was rolling and getting up from the floor and tore her ACL in that same knee, so after that happened she got a little bit of ptsd from it. Other girls were scared that it was going to happen to them because of bad juju on the field, but it was probably the rarest occurrence we could’ve had. Literally one out of a million chances of it happening again,” said Jones.
Although injuries can happen in an instant the impact they have on an athlete’s season is more detrimental. Breuer is disappointed at the unfortunate stop to her senior season.
“It’s really upsetting because that’s probably going to be my last football game ever and I only got to do one or one and a half. So it’s really upsetting but I’ll still get my studio season,” said Breuer.
Having passion in a sport makes it all more difficult for an athlete to lose the opportunity of enjoying and participating in it. Breuer may have had to put an end to her school season but looks forward to putting all her work and effort into her studio season.