A year ago, Romeoville`s Margaret Vasquez could barely walk. Now she`s not only running but also starting for one of the top girls` basketball teams in the Chicago area.
”Nothing short of a miracle” is how coach Frank Aguilar described her comeback from a severe knee injury.
Vasquez, a 5-foot-8-inch guard, tore the ligament that crosses behind the kneecap and is the foundation of the knee. She was injured while playing at a recreation center in Romeoville in April, 1986, the end of her junior year. She was playing defense when she was hit and fell; her body twisted but the knee didn`t move.
She underestimated the damage and reinjured it a week later playing with a youth group.
”The first time I figured I must have torn cartilage; I couldn`t walk well,” she said. ”The second time I knew something tore. I heard it.”
Later that month, Vasquez had surgery to repair cartilage and scrape the kneecap. It was the first of three operations. That August, she had major reconstructive surgery on the knee. Under her doctor`s advice, she had only one option if she wanted to play again: take a year off, from school and basketball.
”After the first operation I was kind of scared,” Vasquez said. ”I knew I`d be out. Then Coach Aguilar and my friends started giving me ideas. Maybe . . . I could stay out for a year and then go back. I felt better about it.”
The Illinois High School Association approved Vasquez`s year-long medical leave, and she was able to return with a year of eligibility. As long as she didn`t attend classes for credit, Vasquez could sit out.
Vasquez`s year off was busy, filled with tedious therapy and a lot of reading, especially about her injury.
”What she did was amazing,” Aguilar said, ”being off school for a year, not going stir-crazy. She spent most of her days at Newsome (Physical Therapy Center in Joliet). She kept up with her schoolwork on her own, reading textbooks and novels.”
Vasquez and Aguilar credit physical therapist Dave Kuhn with her success. ”It`s a miracle what they (Kuhn and surgeon Preston Wolin) did with her,” Aguilar said. ”I thought if we got her back at 80 percent we`d be happy because she was a great player. But now she`s as close to 100 percent as she can be.”
”We made sure she stayed on top of things,” Kuhn said. ”We tried to hold her back while still pushing her ahead. I was really impressed with her attitude. Margaret is the most mature 17-year-old I`ve ever seen. She knew exactly what she had to do. If anything, I had to hold her back. I`d tell her to do 50 reps of something and she`d do 100.”
”I pretty much just went to therapy, at least three times a week,”
Vasquez said. ”I`d stay two to three hours working on the knee. At first it was gradual, just bending it, getting rotation in it. Then I did leg lifts with weights. After it got more flexible, I rode the stationary bike and worked on the isokinetic Lido machine and a machine for balance.”
Kuhn said that because of her strong motivation he never had any doubt she would make a successful recovery. She did suffer a setback, however, when she decided to play basketball a few months after her first operation even though it normally takes nine months to a year to recover. Vasquez stretched the ligament, forcing the August operation and putting her two months behind. Since a third operation last April to remove a screw from the knee, Vasquez has made steady progress. She began playing ball again in June at a team camp in Tennessee. Aguilar was pleased with her progress from the start. ”In that week in June, she played 12 varsity games,” he said. ”She played about eight minutes a game. By the end of the summer, in the Lockport Summer League, we played five games in one day in 100-degree weather. She was in all the games. It was then that I knew she`d be back. I originally thought she`d be a sub off the bench.”
Aguilar has had Vasquez going through the team`s intensive conditioning program. He said she played well in the team`s opener. She led the team Saturday with 13 points against Maine West.
”She`s still very quick, a great shooter,” he said. ”If anything, she has improved because all she was able to do was shoot. She`s a deadly free-throw shooter.”
Vasquez believes the ordeal has changed her for the better.
”I`m starting to realize basketball isn`t the only thing I`ll be doing,” she said. ”I feel more confident than before. The year helped a lot. ”I thought about a lot of things. My therapist helped a lot; to me Dave`s the best. He was there almost every day, pushing me, trying to make me feel good, like I could do anything I wanted to.”
