[Breeze]

Bailey's Injury Update - Swim Atlanta Correspondence

Me to coach
One of the parents of another swimmer found us after the meet yesterday to tell us that Bailey was in the bathroom crying because her shoulder was hurting her. This was news to us, as our understanding of the injury was that it caused some discomfort, but certainly nothing to the level of causing tears from pain. The doctor told us when we had Bailey examined that if the pain was severe she'd need to stop swimming. Unfortunately, we feel that the pain has been significant for a while, and that Bailey has been hiding it from us so she can stay in the pool. In fact, she admitted last night that she is in pain every day at practice. We feel it is in her best interest at this point to pull her out of the pool for a couple of weeks and hopefully allow the physical therapy to work.

Moreover, once she is feeling well, we feel that she's going to need to fix her freestyle before resuming the yardages she is currently practicing, or we'll simply be looking at her reinjuring the shoulder due to poor form. We are strugging to determine the best way to accomplish that. Do you have any suggestions?

----------------------------------

Coach to Me
I am sorry to hear that bailey has not been honest to you guys and me about her shoulder. Every time we work on it she says to me it feels better. My question is does she want to swim or be social with her friends?

We diffently can try a different group here if she feels aag is to hard.

---------------------------------
Me to Coach

(Comment: intially I thought the coach was saying that if the practice was too hard we could move her down...so this was my response)

I don't think she feels it's too hard...from a work standpoint. I think the issue is that the shoulder is injured and with her having the bad freestyle form swimming so many laps the physical therapy isn't having a chance to work.

Then my fear is, even if we get the shoulder right, she'll just reinjure the shoulder unless she can take some time to clean up her form. That's where I think the problem is...getting that form cleaned up to avoid further injury. I certainly am not opposed to backing her down until the freestyle is fixed...

----------------------------------------------------
Me to Coach

(comment - after thinking about what the coach said, I realized I may have misinterpreted his meaning. With this second response I was working under the impression that he was thinking as long as Bailey is willing to get away from her friends we have some options available)

I may have misinterpreted your email initially. Basically, the social aspect has to be put on hold at this point. She is under doctor's orders to come back slowly with a good bit of supervision to insure her stroke is cleaned up. I know that you can't do that during the AAG practice, so we'll have to find another way for her to re-learn the stroke and to build back to AAG level practices...

-----------------------------------------------------
Coach to Me

Sounds like a plan. Sure is more than welcome to swim White practices so we are only doing drills and kicking.

----------------------------------------------------

Coach to Me

(Comment: He followed up the short response above with this)

Just let me know what you guys would like to do. The tuesday thursday group has the most space and Fridays in AAG are the easiest of the days. So she could do White 2days and AAG 1day. Gold group would be an option on Saturdays since they have the whole pool. In the beginning I am not sure she is going to need 4 days in the water.

For us that would be the only options we can do for Bailey. I would suggest gold more but am scared that she would want to push it to hard.

-----------------------------------------