Roxanne Fleischer
News Editor
For senior Steve Wilson, continuing his education at McDaniel for grad school has an added benefit: He will play basketball for one more season.
Wilson, after tearing his labrum, a tendon in his shoulder, in a game before Thanksgiving, had to sit out for more than two-thirds of the season. He will apply for a hardship waiver, known to most as a redshirt, in order to play his last season as a graduate student.
“I have played under the maximum games allowed to redshirt, so I do not see a problem in receiving it,” Wilson said.
For division three schools like McDaniel, athletes who are injured can apply for a hardship waiver if they have played less than one-third of the season, according to McDaniel Athletic Director Jamie Smith.
The hardship waiver is term that division three schools adopted four years ago; red-shirting is “not an NCAA defined term, just a practice that has been around a long time,” Smith said.
The athletic director also said that the application for the waiver must be approved by the Centennial Conference office, but that it is a “pretty cut and dry” process on whether or not the application will be approved; medical verification of an injury and proof that the maximum number of games played has not been surpassed is needed, Smith said.
Fortunately for Wilson, his last season will not count as a full one; he had surgery on Jan. 20, 2009 after playing less than one-third of the basketball games. “I tried to rehab to make it stronger but that did not work so I had surgery,” said Wilson, who is one of two students from McDaniel who have received a hardship waiver this year.
“I am doing rehab daily to regain my strength and should be back to normal by mid-June,” Wilson said.
Head Athletic Trainer Gregg Nibbelink said he sees one to two athletes per week per sport with new injuries. Football is the exception to this, with five to 10 injured players per week in season, mainly because of the number of athletes on the team and because it is a contact sport.
Nibbelink said that, if needed, he refers an athlete to a doctor. Most of the time the doctor will tell the athlete how long they could possibly be out with their particular injury. Nibbelink said he usually agrees with the doctor’s assessment if they tell the athlete that it is not a good idea to come back that season.
“It makes sense [to redshirt],” said Nibbelink, especially if the injury happens during preseason. “A lot of times students are not getting out [of college] for five years anyways,” he said.
Nibbelink said that there are more overuse injuries than impact or accidental injuries when it comes to all of the sports combined. Sports like swimming, track, and tennis are non-impact sports, and injuries usually are from over-training or overuse, he said.
Scott Pusateri, a senior, had to miss most of the indoor track and field season due to patellar bursitis, a knee injury, which lasted three months. His injury, caused by overuse, was diagnosed after he was referred to American Radiology in Westminster where he got an MRI.
“The MRI let me know that there was nothing structurally wrong with my knee, which was a relief,” Pusateri said. “The training room gave me a handful of quadricep and other leg rehab exercises to help strengthen the area around the knee.”
Missy Black, a freshman on the track and cross-country teams, was also injured during part of each season with stress fractures and tendonitis. “For the end of cross-country season,” she said, “I went to my doctor from back home; his diagnosis confirmed that of the trainer.”
When she was injured again during track, the trainers referred her to a facility in Westminster, and again the diagnosis was the same as what the trainer found. “I have not thought about red-shirting,” she said. “Although in retrospect, I believe this would have been a better option for me, considering I continued to have problems throughout each running season.”
As opposed to running, however, sports like football have mostly contact-related injuries. One senior on the football team had an injury that could have kept him out for the season, according to Nibbelink. But the senior came back after five weeks out, choosing not to redshirt the season.
“When an athlete gets hurt, he’s not thinking clearly,” said Nibbelink. “When it comes to counseling an athlete about what to do, I am just a sounding board. [I tell them] this is how long you could be out and give them some objectivity.”
Pusateri said he has not considered red-shirting. “I have always planned on going elsewhere for graduate school,” he said.
Wilson, on the other hand, will be using his last season of eligibility at McDaniel. “I feel at home here. When you spend every day with a group of guys, in and out of practice, they become family,” he said. “I would not feel the same at another school.”