Wookey’s way to recovery

Kayla Wookey’s passion was ripped away from her in an instant, but it took her several days of seesawing emotion to realize the implications of her awkward fall.

In the thick of the first half of a Jan. 15 basketba game between the Murray Lady Mustangs and the Mount Ayr Raiderettes, Murray’s junior point guard took things into her own hands with fellow athletic Lady Mustang Zadie Hatfield in foul trouble.

Wookey had begun to step into her own as a junior, being more aggressive in the offense during the Lady Mustangs’ 12-1 start to the season.

With the rest of her team trailing on a breakaway, Wookey drove to the hoop, hoping for a deuce, but incurred a hack.

“Most of my teammates were behind me and I just drove through the lane against three Mount Ayr girls and they hacked me when I was going up for a layup,” Wookey said. “But when I came down, I hyperextended my leg backward and then I couldn’t hold my own weight.”

Hatfield and Bre Klein were the first to assist a sobbing Wookey to the bench.

Fluid filled the back of her knee. It felt unstable.

After sitting out the rest of the game, Wookey traveled with father and Murray boys basketball coach Darin Wookey for a checkup to see what a doctor would say.

Possible ligament damage or perhaps a torn meniscus was the initial prognosis.

Even knowing that the pain and discomfort in her knee would likely spell the end of her basketball season, such an injury was unlikely to jeopardize her playing her true love, softball.

When an optimistic Wookey came back at practice on Thursday, a talk with first-year Greater Regional Medical Center Athletic Trainer Matt Long quickly soured her mood.

After several more days of waiting for an MRI and the subsequent results, Wookey waited with Darin and her mother, Shelly in the waiting room of DMOS Orthopaedic Center in West Des Moines.

“The doctor came in and he was going through the pictures of my MRI,” Wookey said. “He was like, ‘your meniscus is fine, your ligaments are fine,’ and he switches it over to the next picture and he goes, ‘this is where your ACL should be. You don’t have one.’”

The timetable for return from an ACL injury, let alone the severity in Wookey’s case, often keeps athletes out somewhere in the time frame of six to nine months, typically more toward the latter.

At best, being able to play at state softball was on the table if she worked hard enough.

Wookey nearly immediately burst into tears. Simultaneously, she and Darin both went to call Murray softball coach Danny Jensen.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Jensen said about his thoughts when he received the call. “That’s one of the worst injuries an athlete can get. I was pretty sad about it.”

In the ride home and in the time Wookey laid in bed after, she wanted nothing to do with anyone.

“My mom looked at me and was like ‘you’re just going to have to work through it,’” Wookey said.

Another surprise helped solidify that thinking in her mind.

“I hear a knock on our house door and so I come out to the living room,” Wookey said. “Danny Jensen is standing in my kitchen and he’s hugging me and he’s just telling me everything is going to be okay. That was the point where I was like ‘I’m going to do it for him. I’m going to do it for myself. I’m going to do it for my team.’”

After undergoing surgery at DMOS Orthopaedic Center under Matthew DeWall’s care, Wookey stepped back into the court and went to work with little down time.

At school, a gingerly-moving Wookey received help from the likes of Hailey Chew and Britta Callstrom in fetching and assisting her with her homework and daily routine.

Frustration reigned early after the surgery as Wookey could not even flex her thigh or calf muscle. She had always felt strong and now, helpless in a way.

Hour and a half sessions of elastic band work, leg lifts, stretching and weight lifting helped build toward slow agility workouts. Scar rub sessions to help rebuild the tissue in her injured right knee began.

Soon Wookey wanted her workouts to be added on to.

“I was like ‘give me some more, give me some more,’” Wookey said.

Long did give her more to handle. Before too long, Wookey was doing workouts of 75 pitches every other day as softball season approached.

“The thing with long-term rehab like that is staying intrinsically motivated and she did an outstanding job of that,” Long said. “She stayed motivated every day.  She kept at it.”

She got back to work on her swing.

An appointment toward the beginning of May, and a new checkup date for potential clearance for athletic activities was set in the second week of June, where softball season would be well under way.

Wookey took batting practice and continued her pitching routine through the late parts of the spring. She bonded with assistant coach Tessa Otto, who side-tossed her pitches to hit after varsity softball practice was over.

On the way out of the doctor’s office, Wookey recalled telling the secretary she’d be back sooner than the assigned date.

Sure enough, Wookey was able to convince that office to reschedule her next appointment to June 7. At that meeting, she was given a clear yes.

It had been less than five months after her ACL ripped apart. It has been 4 and 1/2 months after surgery.

Jensen was amazed at what Wookey had accomplished and realized just how fortunate Wookey and the team were to have had the medical assistance from Wookey’s doctors along the way and for Long’s constant sessions with the young Lady Mustang.

“I’m grateful that we have Matt as our athletic trainer. We’ve never had an athletic trainer at Murray before. I give him a lot of credit in this case,” Jensen said.

On June 8, Wookey stepped out of the bus ready to play, and to her surprise was asked by Jensen to pitch against Lamoni.

She pitched three innings, struck out six and walked one on 49 pitches. She went hitless in her first at-bat.

After some issues feeling comfortable with her swing over her first few games, the junior found her groove.

“The glow of getting back on the field, she was so pumped and that’s good to see when you have an athlete who’s excited to be back,” Jensen said. He noted that sometimes the trauma of an injury makes athletes apprehensive for weeks or even months after getting back.

She recorded her first two-hit game in a win over Seymour in her fifth game back. Things really started clicking a little more than a week after that.

Home runs in back-to-back games against Essex and Moulton-Udell on June 20-21 helped her blaze a trail through the rest of the season, as she went on to hit nearly a career-best bating average with a .470 mark and also had a team-leading 35 RBIs and four home runs in 24 games.

In a road win over Moravia on June 29 that essentially clinched the Bluegrass Conference championship — the Lady Mustangs clinched it a day later in a blowout win over Mormon Trail — Wookey bashed two home runs, had three hits and four RBIs.

Wookey was back in her groove in the circle, where she finished with seven wins and two losses, 97 strikeouts in 65 and 2/3 innings and owned a 1.49 ERA.

The near-immediate success of Wookey was only somewhat surprising to Jensen, who knew his all-state performer’s drive.

Unfortunately for the Lady Mustangs, the season came to a frustrating end in a regional semifinals loss to a Moravia squad Murray had already defeated, and left Wookey wishing she had performed better in the circle.

The success Wookey enjoyed on the field this season however, helped earn her even more admirers.

“For me personally, having done several long-term rehabs, this is really toward the top,” Long said. “One of the big things I look at is during a long term rehab, at some point you’re usually going to have one type of set back.”

Wookey never had any such setback.

She aims to keep that fire in her as she prepares to play for the Iowa Blitz travel softball squad based out of Urbandale she has been a member of since she was in seventh grade.

Wookey had even considered skipping summer ball given the importance she placed on fall ball and how it is used as a springboard to play college softball. One Iowa collegiate coach, as impressed with Wookey as anyone, told her the very reason they wanted her on their team was for the perseverance and work ethic she demonstrated in coming back from the injury.

“She’s a lifelong softball player and the game means a lot to her,” Jensen said. “Even from her younger days all the way back to elementary school, she has always had softball at the forefront. Yes, she plays every sport that’s true. But I really do think she was a little more motivated because she wanted to make something out of the softball season.”

If the injury, and her road back taught her anything, it was to savor every moment playing the sport she loves most.

“I keep telling myself never take anything for granted. That’s what I posted on Facebook. It was an announcement to other athletes around me, especially in other counties,” Wookey said. “I went through it. I know Emma Atwood (of Central Decatur) went through it, and as soon as she found out, she was there for me. So it was sort of me being there for future athletes when they have to go through it.”

So into another season of ball Wookey goes, full steam ahead. The rising Murray senior doesn’t want a break. She’s determined to make this fall and her last year at Murray her breakthrough year that leads the Lady Mustangs to a long-awaited return trip to Fort Dodge.