Playing Hurt

Sharon Shelton’s shoulder hurt, and that’s bad news for a volleyball player, especially for a hard-swinging outside hitter.

The pain was great and constant--throbbing when she wasn’t playing, worse when she was on the court--but Shelton played on last spring for her club team, Long Beach-based Asics Nova.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” said Shelton, a senior at Ocean View High. “You’re supposed to be tough. It’s just pain. I’m used to playing with little pains.

“I didn’t realize it was something serious until it was too late.”

Shelton is still paying for her mistake. Despite resting her shoulder for most of the last six months, she still hasn’t recovered and is sitting out her final season at defending state Division III champion Ocean View.

Shelton is one of at least seven top Orange County girls’ volleyball players who have had their seasons ended or limited this fall.

* Mater Dei outside hitter Lauren Warner is out for the season after surgery for a herniated disk in her back.

* Fountain Valley outside hitter Natalie Snowden is playing with a sore right shoulder that forced her to hit left-handed early in the season.

* Marina outside hitter Katie Keating recently recovered from two severe sprained ankles that she hurt simultaneously during a warmup drill last month.

* Esperanza outside hitter Julia Rex is playing despite an ankle she sprained the first day of practice and aggravated last month.

* Esperanza middle blocker Laura St. John also has been playing with sprained ankles.

* Last week, Corona del Mar outside hitter Jamie Brownell rolled her ankle during the Sea Kings’ loss to Newport Harbor but is trying to get ready for tonight’s match against Irvine.

Volleyball is a high-impact sport, so it’s no surprise that players suffer injuries. The game has become more athletic in the last decade, and hitters flying at the net to slam the ball must eventually come down. Sometimes they land on teammates’ feet. Ankles are sprained. Knees twisted. Fingers jammed.

Every sport has its typical injuries. Cross-country has shin splints. Football and soccer have knee injuries. Volleyball has sprained ankles.

But some observers fear certain girls’ volleyball players are being stretched too thin, leading to overuse injuries.

Boys are not immune to such injuries but few play the sport as continuously as the girls do. Like many competitive youth sports, girls’ volleyball has become a year-round pursuit. In the last 15 years, the number of junior club teams in Southern California has grown 10-fold to the current level of about 400.

Among the factors fueling the growth is the quest for college scholarships. Women’s volleyball is offered by 292 NCAA Division I institutions, which are allowed 12 scholarships yearly. The Division II numbers are 271 programs and eight scholarships.

Any way you do the math, that’s a lot of money to chase.

And Orange County is producing more than its share of collegiate players. One example: In a recent Ivy League match between Princeton and Brown, 10 of the 24 players on the rosters were from the Orange County Volleyball Club.

Looking to replicate that success, many players--often with encouragement from their parents--are deciding to give up other athletic pursuits to specialize on volleyball.

The decision has consequences, said Dr. Alan Beyer, a Newport Beach orthopedic surgeon and the team doctor at University High.

“As soon as you do the same thing year round, that’s when you have problems,” Beyer said. “And it’s something we’ve always seen in swimming and gymnastics, which have traditionally been year-round sports. But now we’re starting to see it in volleyball.

“And the players who are better at the sport paradoxically are also the ones who are taxing their bodies at a higher level, so they’re the ones who are more likely to get a repetitive-use injury.”

One of the most common and potentially serious of these injuries is to the shoulder, Beyer said. Girls tend to have loose shoulder joints and without proper stretching and strengthening exercises, injuries are likely. The rotator cuff--four muscles that hold the humerus bone in the shoulder socket--usually goes first.

“They build up their power muscles,” Beyer said, “but don’t adequately strengthen their rotator cuff and that’s why they are starting to get a lot more shoulder problems.”

Steve Nicholas, a Fullerton physical therapist, sees quite a few volleyball injuries. He also has two daughters--Sunny, a freshman at Baylor, and Stevie, a junior at Sunny Hills--who are standout players.

“The tendency among volleyball-playing girls at the high school level is for them to be tall, hyper-elastic and not very well-muscled,” Nicholas said. “I think sometimes they are predisposed to injury.

“Those who excel go directly from high school to club, and very few of the programs have enough time to allow these girls to cross-train and what do they do? They jump a zillion times a day and swing at the ball a zillion times a day.”

Club Teams Criticized

The current club system comes under fire from some high school coaches, who say the season is too long. It runs from December through the national championships in early July. Then it gives way to the high school summer league season, which is followed by the fall high school season.

“Between high school and club volleyball some of these girls are only getting two or three weeks off a year,” Dana Hills Coach Mark Rivadeneyra said. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out there’s going to be wear and tear going on.”

Rivadeneyra has personal experience with shoulder problems. After his playing career at San Clemente High, Orange Coast and UC Irvine, Rivadeneyra became a high school and club coach. There were times when he was running three practices a day at different locations, and it took a toll on his body.

He did so much hitting while coaching that he eventually had to have shoulder surgery to repair a years-old rotator-cuff tear that had healed.

“Because these girls play club for seven or eight months a year, you wait until they’re 21,” Rivadeneyra said. “They are going to have the surgery that I’ve had to have.

“If I had a girl now--I have three boys--she would not play club. She would play with me or she would be in a club program that addresses these concerns.”

Rivadeneyra’s Dana Hills team hasn’t suffered any serious injuries but there have been enough minor ones--sprained ankles, mostly--that he plans to institute a prevention program if he remains at the school.

“I just think it’s our responsibility,” he said. “Even with ankles. You’ve got to strengthen your ankles. You can prevent injuries.”

Some have worked through them, as shown by the experience of Chanda McLeod, a senior outside hitter at defending state Division I champion Marina. McLeod had shoulder tendinitis, but with physical therapy to strengthen her rotator cuff, recovered without sitting out much.

Part of the reason for her quick recovery might be that McLeod is an elite athlete in two sports: she also is a starting forward on Marina’s defending Southern Section Division I-A champion girls’ basketball team.

Cross Training Helps

Switching sports--cross-training--helps prevent overuse injuries by changing the muscles that are being taxed. And McLeod could be a poster child for cross-training. During high school basketball season, she also practices three times a week and plays tournaments two weekends a month with the Orange County Volleyball Club.

McLeod said club practices are long and intense but worth the effort.

“They’re scheduled for three hours but always go longer,” she said. “It always goes at least four, but my coach is really good about stretching and making sure we take care of our bodies and take vitamins and everything, so our team is always really healthy.

“We don’t get a lot of injuries, so I can’t really say that overuse is why everybody is getting hurt.”

For standout players such as McLeod, there’s little rest during high school volleyball season, either. On a strong club team, there are usually several powerful hitters, so no player takes an overwhelming number of swings.

A high school team usually doesn’t have as much depth. For instance, when Keating sprained her ankles this season at Marina, the Vikings turned to McLeod on about 70% of their offensive plays, Marina Coach Darrick Lucero said.

“I think the game has gotten to the point where if you have a girl who you can utilize in every rotation in the game, you’re going to do that,” Lucero said. “I know I’ve done that with Chanda. In every position on the court, we can run a play designed to get her the ball.”

Lucero said he tries to limit McLeod’s swings in practice and doesn’t allow her to jump serve--another action that puts major stress on the shoulder. But McLeod, whose playing time this season has been reduced by mononucleosis, is difficult to slow down.

“I tell her no and she gets mad,” Lucero said. “She’s like an Energizer bunny; she’ll keep going and going until it runs out, and I want to save her as long as possible. I don’t want her to run out until our last match.”

Charlie Brande, McLeod’s club coach who has been with Orange County Volleyball Club since 1978, dismisses the notion that year-round volleyball is damaging.

“Girls have done that for 20 years,” he said. “I’ve been coaching for 20 years and I don’t even know that there are two or three shoulder problems we’ve had along the way. Sure your shoulder hurts a little bit, but not to the point you can’t play.”

Technique Important

Brande, who is also the men’s coach at UC Irvine, does say, however, that some coaches over-emphasize hitting and aren’t teaching the proper techniques.

“Everybody looks and says hitting is what this game is all about,” he said. “Whereas in reality passing, digging, serving, those type of things are the ones that are going to allow you to be successful, and they don’t put the stress on your body.

“Hitting’s fun, everybody agrees. You look at hitting and it’s so exciting and it’s a big part of the game, but you’ve got to be careful how you do it.”

Although some club coaches wouldn’t mind seeing the club season shortened, it’s not likely to happen. They point out that clubs also are flourishing in soccer, basketball, softball and other sports and that colleges teams--in every sport--recruit the most polished players.

“There are people who realize that to get good at something, you have to spend a lot of time at it,” said Tim Mennealy, volleyball coach at Ocean View and Cal Juniors, a Huntington Beach-based club. “You don’t become a soccer player by just playing a few months in high school. You have to play all year.”

But if a player does play year round, she--or he--should be advised to pursue a sport-specific weight-training program.

Shelton, the Ocean View player, says she will never again be caught without one. Last week, she was told that her injury will require arthroscopic surgery.

After recovery, she plans to work hard to be ready to play for her club this winter and for Santa Clara University next fall.

“I don’t want to ever have to do this again,” she said. “It’s kind of hard. Everything else on me is healthy and ready to go. It’s just my stupid shoulder.”

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Overuse Problem

Volleyball’s spiking motion puts strain on the shoulder, the most mobile but least stable joint in the body. The key to shoulder stability is the rotator cuff, a group of muscles that hold the head of the humerus bone in the shoulder socket.

Painful Pinch

When the rotator cuff muscles aren’t maintained, the humerus slips out of alignment and the supraspinatus--one of the rotator cuff muscles--is pinched between the humerus and the acromion. What often follows is inflammation of the supraspinatus and, if not rested and treated, eventually a tear in the muscle.

Sources: Drs. Alan Beyer and Peter Reynolds