Between a Hoop and a Hard Brace

They looked tougher than I remembered . . . these middle-aged women in basketball jerseys, with sweatbands holding their bangs in place.

The basketball seemed heavier too as I tried to hoist it shoulder high and launch a shot from the top of the key. The rim seemed very far away, and higher than it used to be.

It was my first time on the court with the Mason Mommas in more than a year, and by the end of our hourlong practice, my breathing was labored, my arms leaden, my legs beginning to ache and throb.

I shuffled off the floor with the realization that it would take more than the high-priced, high-tech, color-coordinated brace that held my knee together to get me into the game again.

*

Even before I tore up my knee, I was hardly a standout in our local women’s basketball league . . . one of those players with little talent, who tries to compensate with hustle and speed.

Still, our Sunday games were the highlight of my weekend days . . . a chance to shed my Mommy persona, to release a week’s worth of pent-up aggression in an outlet we considered “play.”

Then, one clumsy move on defense--”You’re supposed to slide your feet, Mommy,” my daughter later explained--snapped a ligament in my knee and threatened to sideline me permanently.

I spent weeks on crutches and months in physical therapy. A rigorous rehabilitation regime, my physician said, was my only alternative to knee surgery.

My doctor’s prescription was daily swims, morning walks, lunchtime workouts in the office gym. My reality was considerably different. . . . At best, I managed to squeeze in a few minutes of exercise at the end of each day, when I’d strap on a pair of ankle weights and lift my legs while I folded laundry.

Still, recovery proceeded anyway. I limped through summer, but by September, I could hike at an easy pace. One day in October, I wound up taking the stairs at my office two at a time, because I was late. My knee held up, though the trek left me winded. I knew then that I’d come a long way.

Then at Thanksgiving, I was drawn into my children’s impromptu soccer game. Forty minutes up and down a muddy field. . . . Lots of slips and awkward kicks, but very little lingering pain.

Three months and one $900 knee brace later, I was back at the gym and ready to play.

*

It’s a risk I contemplate as I struggle to strap on my new brace, trying to recall which belt to loop through which buckle, so it won’t slide down my leg as I play.

This game is fun, but what’s the price I’m willing to pay to play?

I think back to the fellow I met poolside on vacation last summer--another middle-aged weekend athlete.

Long scars ran up the front of both his knees. He grimaced as he walked toward the Jacuzzi and climbed down into the water gingerly.

He’d torn the ACL, the main ligament in the knee, in his right leg two years ago, playing basketball in a YMCA league. One year after reconstructive surgery, he was back on the court . . . where he promptly blew out his other knee.

He was recovering now from his second reconstructive surgery. “One more month, and the doc says I can start playing again,” he announced, massaging his still-swollen knee.

Why, I asked him, would a man in his 40s--a traveling salesman with three young kids, a man in need of two good knees--go back to playing ball again, and risk such crippling injuries?

He patted his flabby stomach, then ran a hand through his thinning hair. “This and this,” he said. “It’s the one thing that still makes me feel young, where I can forget about all the stress in my days.”

He’d been playing since college, same guys, same league. “I won’t quit,” he said, “until they drag me away.”

*

They had dragged me away that day last spring, when I hurt my knee and crumpled to the floor in pain.

But last Sunday, I joined the ranks of weekend athletes who’ve been injured, but not frightened away, when I again took the court at our local park.

All around me were other middle-aged women, willing to risk injury for some undeniable, if intangible, gain.

Our league was once a novelty, launched three years ago with pickup games expressly for mothers . . . women who’d been hauling their kids for years to basketball games and now wanted their own chance to play.

A few had played basketball in high school or learned the game coaching their daughters’ teams. But most of us had done little more than cheer at our children’s games.

We’ve come a long way as players since those early days, when we called uniforms “outfits” and didn’t know the foul line from the key. Now we box out and post up, run fast breaks and give-and-goes.

Given our limited skills and our motherly physiques, our games sometimes still resemble a cross between roller derby and PTA.

But we’ve discovered our inner athlete, and it’s hard to keep that desire at bay.

So each season our list of injured grows. Torn ligaments, broken fingers, sprained ankles, injured knees. . . . We hobble off to recuperate, weighing the pain and inconvenience against that indescribable pleasure of snatching a rebound or firing the shot that wins the game.

So, I’ll be practicing layups this weekend, trying to get myself in shape. And hoping I can learn to dribble without banging my good knee on the metal bar that holds my other knee in place.