Article November 14, 2016 Issue

Freedom from sports injuries

Sophia Hathaway

I played three sports in high school, so I was constantly “in season.” During basketball, I was playing club volleyball. During volleyball, club basketball. And then during track season, I did club volleyball again.

So it got to be pretty frustrating when I sprained my ankle every single year while playing sports. Besides dealing with discomfort, I hated missing two sports, even for a couple of days.

Each time I’d sprain my ankle, I’d pray about it and be back on the court fairly quickly. I especially liked working with the definition of man from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I often thought about the part that says that man is “not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements” (p. 475). It was helpful to recognize that I wasn’t made up of a bunch of parts that could be damaged, but that my substance was entirely spiritual. But I needed to deal with the fact that the sprains kept happening.