May 7, 2013 –
As soon as Taylor woke up from surgery he had questions for Dr. Rahill. “How long will the recovery be? When can I skate again? What can I do for strengthening?” He was instantly anxious to get back to where he was before. “I was white knuckling the bed because I wanted so badly to get out there and play again.”
Taylor is a 21 year-old UCCS student and a defenseman on the roller hockey team. He has not only played with his team for three years now, but is actually the president and founder of the club. Taylor selected his team and created it all. The mountain lions are three time regional champs in their league, the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Roller Hockey Association.
We met Taylor in September of 2012 when he came into D1 on crutches after a meniscus repair. While playing hockey at a tournament in San Jose he got tied up with another player’s skates. His leg went in one direction and his body in another. “When I first got here I watched Scott undo my bandages. I couldn’t move my knee; I couldn’t do anything normal at all. It got me really down. I let the injury affect my mental state.” He’d also been through recent heartbreak, regarding which he was surprisingly candid. He had the humility to admit that the breakup was most likely due to his depleted morale in the wake of his injury. So as it turns out, he carried a lot of loss on his shoulders when he first walked in here.
It was around the end of October that Taylor was ready to do more intensive strength training and skating-specific exercise. “That was when I started working out significantly on my own time as well. I was going as hard as I could here at physical therapy, which encouraged me to work hard at the gym, which in turn helped me when I got back to skating. I almost felt like I was addicted to coming here and sweating it all out. I got a healthy mentality back, as well as hope that I could regain everything I’d lost, plus some.”
Before Taylor knew it, Erica (PTA) was working him so hard that he joked, “I couldn’t walk after the sessions with her.” He found the single leg TRX lunges to be particularly brutal. This was about the time that Scott (his evaluating PT) started him on puck-handling and stick drills. It was clear that he’d soon be ready to revisit the life he’d been missing so badly.
Taylor credits the breakup as his biggest source of motivation. “The lesson I took out of it was to get positive again and pick myself back up.” His dad, who is also his coach, was a big inspiration as well. “I wanted to play for him again. He was always the hockey dad when I was growing up. He was always there for me.”
“And then it was the people here who encouraged me. I’ve never been in an environment where people are so positive. It was thanks to Erica, Scott, and Sarah that I was able to get back in shape and get healthy. It was everything I could have hoped for in terms of recovery, and I was able to learn along the way. It completely turned my life around.”
We all loved Taylor as soon as we met him. He always looked you right in the eye and was quick to smile. If he was ever down we had no way of knowing. He never showed it. They say the right attitude has everything to do with a successful recovery. Taylor epitomized this. It was easy to admire his eagerness and thorough dedication.
Scott says, “His progression and compliance was greatly aided by D1’s ability to customize his rehabilitative exercises to benefit his hockey career.”
Erica says, “I trained him pretty hard in the end because I knew he could take it, and I knew it was the way to get him back in the game where he wanted to be.”
A few months after he graduated from his program with us, I called Taylor up to talk about his story. This is what he had to say. “I’m doing great! Our team was invited to compete at the 2013 nationals in Fort Myers, Florida. In the final game we defeated Northeastern University in overtime to take the national championship.”
There are some people in this world who actually get what they deserve. We were overjoyed to hear that Taylor is one of those people.
