SEATTLE — Two years ago, Seattle Pacific University javelin thrower Brittany Aanstad was competing at the Great Northwest Athletic Conference track and field championships.
She was throwing well, but her elbow hurt.
Of course, being a champion means playing through pain, so Aanstad kept throwing. And on her final attempt, she made a winning toss of 147 feet, 10 inches.
It was a joyful moment for the SPU freshman. But, darn, her elbow still hurt.
Aanstad, a 2007 graduate of Lake Stevens High School, was supposed to compete at the NCAA Division II championships a few weeks later, but by then she had a diagnosis for her sore arm. She had torn the ulnar collateral ligament in her elbow, which is an injury common to throwing athletes and most often major league baseball pitchers.
And like many of those players, Aanstad needed a procedure — Tommy John surgery, named for the pitcher who first had the operation — to restore her elbow.
In July of 2008, a hamstring tendon taken from a cadaver was surgically inserted into Aanstad’s arm and threaded in a figure-eight pattern through four holes drilled in her ulna and humerus bones. She was in a cast for two weeks and a sling for two more weeks before beginning an arduous, year-long rehabilitation.
“It’s a long, long recovery from surgery,” she said. “It was a dark year, to be completely honest. I couldn’t even shoot a basketball. I couldn’t do anything, so it was a rough year.”
But the gloomy months of 2009 have apparently given way to a more promising 2010.
The 21-year-old Aanstad, now a redshirt sophomore, is training again and has thrown over 160 feet in practice, or about 13 feet beyond her conference-winning mark from two years ago. She should be one of the top NCAA Division II javelin throwers this season with a chance to qualify for the U.S. Track and Field Championships later in the spring.
“My arm feels good,” she said. “But my expectations for this first year are just to be at a competitive level. If I’m competitive at a high level, I think that’s all I can ask for. And after that, I’ll have two more years of high hopes.”
Aanstad is left with a 3-inch scar on the inside of her right elbow and a new body part that friends have nicknamed Ligament Lucy.
“That’s her name,” Aanstad said with a smile. “No one really asks me how my arm is. They ask me how Lucy is.”
According to SPU head track coach Karl Lerum, Aanstad used her redshirt year to train in whatever ways she could, including her footwork, which is critical to a proper javelin release.
“Brittany is sort of the equivalent of a track gym rat,” he said. “She loves the track, she loves training and she loves getting better at things. She’s really a student of track.”
Even during the many months “when she couldn’t touch a weight or any kind of throwing implement, she worked very hard around her injuries. She was able to focus her training on the parts of her body she could work on.”
Going into the new season, Lerum added, “I think she can win a national championship in Division II, no question about that. She has the ability. Now she has to stay healthy in other parts of her body, and then put it together in a meet.”
Because Aanstad is a gifted all-around athlete, she also does well in the heptathlon, which is an outdoor track event for women that includes, in order, the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200, long jump, javelin and 800.
She already excels in the javelin, Lerum said, “and she has a tremendous high jump, a good long jump, and she’s getting better at the hurdles, 200 and 800. So I think she can be 5,000-point heptathlete this year, which is a very strong score.”
For now, in fact, Aanstad considers herself more of a heptathlete than a javelin thrower because “I like the heptathlon a lot,” she said. “If I had it my way, I would do the heptathlon and I’d pole vault. … I think I’d go crazy if I could only do the javelin.”
And yet her greater future potential is likely in the javelin. If she can get to 170 or 175 feet in two years, she could probably throw at the U.S. Olympic Trials for the 2012 Games in London. And a chance to be an Olympian is probably her ultimate desire in track and field.
But those are all distant dreams, she knows, given what has been — and still is — a long and difficult road of recovery.
“I’ve worked really hard not to psych myself up too big,” she said, “because it’s been a long time (since she last competed). All I hope to do this year is be competitive and then see where that puts me.”
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