Long road to recovery

  • By Bob Mortenson / Herald Writer
  • Monday, January 10, 2005 9:00pm
  • Sports

EVERETT – Watching her go through an array of chop steps, sprinter’s skips and high-knee drills, it’s difficult to imagine where University of the Pacific softball player Gina Carbonatto stood a scant eight months ago.

Forget about having an up-and-down day. On May 1 of last year, Carbonatto had an up-and-down play.

First, the freshman outfielder set the school’s single-season record for hits. Leading off against Long Beach State, the left-handed hitting Carbonatto slapped the ball down the left-field line with enough English on it to make Minnesota Fats drool with envy.

Seconds later, a banner freshman season – Carbonatto hit .449 and earned first-team honors on the NCAA Division I National Fastpitch Coaches All-America Team – abruptly ended.

As the speedy Carbonatto rounded second, looking to perhaps stretch a stand-up double into a triple, she suffered a severe right knee injury.

The 2003 Lake Stevens High School graduate got her triple all right, just not the kind that shows up in the box score. When she clipped shoulders with the Long Beach State second baseman, Carbonatto planted her right foot awkwardly and fell to the infield with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, a torn medial collateral ligament and a torn meniscus – a grim combination of knee carnage sometimes referred to as the “unhappy triad.”

“It felt like my quad (muscle) was in my calf,” Carbonatto recalled last month as she worked out at Team Fitness in east Everett.

Carbonatto’s comeback started almost the instant she hit the ground.

Having fallen about six feet beyond second base, she army crawled on her stomach back to the bag to beat the throw from the outfield.

“I was devastated,” Carbonatto said. “I was lying there screaming and howling ‘I’m done, I’m done.’”

But, really, she was just getting started.

“The hunger was already there before the surgery ever happened,” Pacific coach Brian Kolze said.

Within days Carbonatto was doing exercises to improve mobility as well as leg lifts and quad flexes to build knee strength in preparation for the surgery in Everett.

Carbonatto underwent surgery on June 10 to reconstruct the ACL and clean up the meniscus. The MCL was left to heal itself.

To reconstruct the ACL, a rod-like screw was put through Carbonatto’s femur bone. A graft of tendon, taken from her right hamstring, was looped over the rod and attached to another screw at the top of the tibia bone.

The energetic Carbonatto, a basketball and softball star at Lake Stevens, started rehabilitation almost immediately.

Two days after surgery she was doing leg lifts at home. “I must have done thousands of them,” Carbonatto said with a laugh.

Within weeks she was up on a stationary bicycle under the direction of a physical therapist. At first she was unable to push the right pedal all the way around. Gradually, full rotations became possible. Ten-minute rides became 20, then 30.

“You have to induce the pain to stretch out the graft,” Carbonatto said. “I can’t lie. I cried a couple times it hurt so bad.”

Pain aside, progress came quickly. By early August she was able to chop her feet well enough to perform straight-ahead ladder drills.

“I was excited because I was actually getting some hop in my step,” she said.

On Aug. 14, Carbonatto returned to Stockton, Calif. to continue rehab under the direction of the trainers in Pacific’s athletic department. She worked out five days a week for one or two hours each day.

Ever walked backwards on an inclined treadmill? While teammates played fall ball, Carbonatto donned leg bands and did more monster walks than Lon Chaney Jr. on a moonlit night.

Missing fall ball was particularly hard for Carbonatto, who credits her successful transition to NCAA Division I softball in part to the experience gained in the fall of 2003, including the hitting lessons learned from assistant coach Heather Tarr, now the head coach at the University of Washington.

“I worked my butt off,” Carbonatto said. “If there was an opportunity to hit, I was out there.”

But the fall of 2004 brought only a growing impatience and a yearning to get back in the game.

“I was just getting frustrated,” Carbonatto said. “I was at the point of believing I could do more than my leg was allowing me to.”

Pacific’s staff kept her in check.

“Gina worked really hard,” trainer Jodi Baker said. “But, after 10 or 12 weeks, the graft is actually at its weakest point. It starts to die and the new cells are regenerating within the tissue of the graft.”

Prospects brightened by mid-October. Carbonatto was allowed to start bunting and shortly thereafter started slap-hitting while a coach lobbed balls from behind a screen.

“She did everything in her power and then some to get back on the field,” Kolze said.

She also got permission to get off the treadmill and jog, then sprint.

“That’s when I started getting excited again,” Carbonatto said. “I could see progress and it wasn’t just in the training room.”

When she returned home to Lake Stevens last month for winter break, Carbonatto consulted her surgeon and was given the green light to resume full activity on Dec 20.

Softball practice started at Pacific on Monday and Carbonatto was ready to put her knee to the real test. She said she felt strong, ready to run down fly balls or leg out an infield hit.

Any concern about the possibility of reinjury is taking a backseat to her competitive fire.

Said Carbonatto: “I’ll take that risk any day to be able to play.”

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