r senior year will be the last time they will ever get to represent their school again. Many seniors who get injuries will choose to push it off and deal with it after the season, when they no longer need to worry about their sport. For seniors Weston Chance and Hudson Da Rosa, playing in college doesn’t grant them that luxury.
Senior Hudson Da Rosa’s injury occurred during summer baseball while trying to get the attention of college scouts.
“I hit a double into the gap and tried to stretch into a triple, and when I slid into third to try and evade the tag, I landed on my right shoulder, and basically pushed it too far in, and it tore my labrum in what is called an anterior tear,” Da Rosa said.
For Senior Weston Chance, his torn labrum occurred right before the season in a freak accident during practice.
“It was in practice about a week before our first game,” Chance said. “We were inside the field house, and I was running behind the net and dove, landed on my left shoulder, and upon sitting up, realized that it was no longer in the socket.”
Right after Da Rosa’s injury, he did not remember feeling anything out of the ordinary, but after throwing a baseball the next inning, he knew something was up, and went to get an MRI.
“When I got the first MRI, it wasn’t very high quality, and the doctor misread it, and thought that I did not have a tear, so I could just rehab it,” Da Rosa said. “They told me when they thought it wasn’t torn that it would be five to 10 weeks of just building back up to throwing, but as I tried to work through that, I started to realize that my shoulder wasn’t getting better.”
On the other hand, Chance knew right after he fell that something was wrong with his shoulder. He recalls Coach Leneau rushing him to the training room, where they rushed to treat his injury, and failed to pop the shoulder back in.
“They were unable to get (my shoulder) back inside the training room. So then I went to the ER, and they had to sedate me to get it back in,” Chance said. “For the first 10 days, I was just locking it down and immobilizing it. So I wore a sling for about a week and a half until I went back to see the doctor.”
After a second MRI, Da Rosa found out that he had a torn labrum. His doctors told him that he wouldn’t be one-hundred percent unless he got surgery, but that surgery could have possibly affected his season.
“As soon as we realized it was torn, the consensus was I’m not going to ever be fully back unless I get surgery. So, it was up to me to decide how much I wanted to rehab it, and I did, and I just wasn’t able to throw to the best of my ability, so I focused on hitting,” Da Rosa said.
For Chance, he knew he couldn’t miss the entire season, and opted to rehab for six weeks to minimize the risk of reinjuring his labrum. Chance also took other precautions to protect his shoulder.
“I sat out a total of about six weeks. But it’s something we’re monitoring very closely throughout the season. I’ve been seeing my doctor a lot and might have to take some downtime after the season to let it fully heal,” Chance said. “I’ve been wearing (A sole brace) this whole season, and that helps to prevent another dislocation. It’s definitely difficult to play in the brace because it limits your range of motion, but it makes it hurt less, and it keeps you at a lower risk of re-injuring it.”
For Da Rosa, he couldn’t imagine having to miss his senior season, and he was more than ok taking the risk in hopes of playing a full season.
“I’ve just put too much into it. I couldn’t imagine not playing my senior season, no matter how small the part I was gonna play. The risk of maybe making my tear worse was more than worth it to just finish it out with the season,” Da Rosa said.
Chance understands how a re-injury could put his college career in jeopardy. He also knows how much work he has put into his senior season, and he knows that sitting out the season wouldn’t sit right with him, even if he didn’t go full speed ahead.
“I worked super hard, super diligently. I did everything they told me,” Chance said. “My mindset was that I want to get out there as soon as I possibly can, but I don’t want to push it to where there’s an elevated risk of reinjury.”
For Da Rosa, getting injured the summer before his senior year could have impacted his chances to play in college, but he was surprised to see that colleges were telling him to get healthy rather than to push himself.
“There was really only one school that I was getting attention from, and they didn’t have a huge problem with the injury.,” Da Rosa said. “They were in support of me playing through my season to the best of my ability and just rehabbing when I got on campus.”
On the other hand, Chance had committed pre-injury, but still saw risks with playing out his high school career.
“I was definitely cautious with coming back, because I didn’t want to reinjure (my shoulder) to where my college career would be in jeopardy.”