JuJu Watkins Has Suffered an ACL Tear and Will Have Surgery
With March Madness underway many basketball enthusiasts have been looking forward to seeing big time college stars duke it out. However, the Trojans were majorly impacted last night during a matchup with Mississippi State. In the first quarter, their number one player took a bad fall after her knee looked to give out; which led to serious injury. Now the school has confirmed, that JuJu Watkins has suffered an ACL Tear requiring surgery.
For an athlete ACL tears are devastating. It affects a part of the body that is needed for pretty much any kind of movement from walking to running. And it can require a lot of down time in order to recover properly. According to UC Health,
For reasons that are unclear, Female athletes are four times as likely as their male counterparts to experience an ACL injury… Since the early 1980s, surgeons have reconstructed torn ACLs by replacing them with autografts, tendons that have been harvested from elsewhere in the patient’s body. These include the patellar tendon from the front of the knee and tendons from the quadriceps and hamstrings.”
USC Women’s Basketball confirmed the news that Watkins would undergo such a procedure stating,
“JuJu Watkins sustained a season-ending injury in the NCAA Second Round on Monday night. She will undergo surgery and then begin rehabilitation shortly thereafter.”
Technology in the medical field has advanced but knee injuries can still take a long period for an athlete to feel back to normal. Dr. Eric McCarty reveals,
“It takes a while for the graft to become part of the body and go through a process of we call ligamentization, which is becoming a new ligament. That process can take nine or 10 months.
Although some exceptional athletes can return to sports in six months, a more realistic scenario after an ACL tear is a recovery time of at least eight to nine months.
Even then, after you’ve done great therapy and have come back to sports, it can sometimes take another year before you feel normal again.”
JuJu Watkins Has Suffered an ACL Tear and Will Have Surgery
Furthermore, McCarty’s patients often tell him that it isn’t until the second season after ACL surgery that they feel like they have fully returned to their previous level of play. So surgery is only the beginning. It is necessary for repair but full recovery happens long after.
Since starting college ball, Watkins has scored 1,709 collegiate points, which ranks second in Division I history through two seasons behind former Ohio State guard Kelsey Mitchell (1,762). So on the court she is definitely a force to be reckoned with and helps a team be a serious contender. But with a year of recovery ahead, the “JuJu Comeback Tour” now begins. Therefore, we are wishing Miss Watkins all the best and a very fast recovery.
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