by Two best friends both sidelined with knee injuries cause whispers of suspicion to flitter among teammates with working knees.
Seated parallel to their coaches, a left knee bent, a right knee swollen, drooping shoulders, lacrosse sticks forgotten to the side, and heads following the active drill they cannot participate in: not the ideal picture for two varsity athletes.
Halfway into the season, a defenseman found herself sidelined after another player fell into her left knee, stealing the knee’s stability. Two games later, an attackman picked herself up from the bottom of a pile of fallen players and hobbled off the field, her knee swelling rapidly. The defenseman and the attackman, with two working knees between them, happened to be best friends: an unfortunate coincidence or kind of convenient?
After two weeks of limping from the trainer to practice, just to sit on the sidelines, the injured athletes grew restless and their teammates suspicious. The more upfront teammates would, not so jokingly, point out how funny it was that the pair, who had never faced injuries in the past, happened to be out at the same time for injuries that appeared fairly minor. They suggested that maybe they were not truly as injured as they let on, trying to get out of practicing because, after all, the girls primarily played lacrosse to fill the sports requirement at their school.
The defenseman and attackman took great offense to these allegations. Yes, they admitted, they complained about practicing in the past and that lacrosse was not always the first thing they wanted to do right after class. But, they explained, they loved lacrosse, and not playing pained them almost as much as the actual injuries.
They missed the way it felt to sprint down the field with the ball. They missed allowing all the stress of the day to fall away as they played. Because of their injured knees, these feelings became luxuries that they could not wait to possess again.
Sure, it pleased them they had each other on the sidelines; it made the regrettable situation bearable. They reminded each other to stay positive and that soon enough the picture would look more like this: running opposite their coach, a stable left knee, a normal-sized right knee, lacrosse sticks in the air, and a ball at the back of the net.
