One day in third grade changed my sports career forever. I was at a softball open gym and we were shuffling and rolling ground balls to our partners. One time when I got a ball rolled to me I was distracted. When I shuffled over, I stepped on top of the softball and rolled my left ankle over it. It didn’t feel good at all, but I didn’t know what really happened. I just knew it hurt really bad.

I wanted to continue playing softball, so I just limped the rest of the open gym. After the open gym, my mom picked me up and I told her about my ankle. She thought it was just a small sprain or something. She told me I was fine, so I continued to go to dance practice and softball open gym for two weeks. I continued practicing until it got swollen and hurt so bad.

She finally decided to take me for an X-ray. Turned out that I chipped a nice big piece off the front of my left ankle. My mom was shocked because she thought I was fine. I was kind of shocked too because I had been dancing and playing softball on it. It did hurt, but I didn’t think it was broken.

My mom ended up feeling so bad that she made me continuously do physical activity on it. After they found out it was a chip they gave me a boot and some wrap. I ended up not being able to play softball that year, which really upset me. Even though I did physical activity on my ankle it was still going to heal pretty quickly because it wasn’t so bad. I still continued to dance with my boot on because by the time I could get it off I could still dance at the competitions.

My dance teacher was really proud that I worked so hard with my boot on. At the end of the dance season I got an “Unstoppable” award because of the work and effort I put in. The next softball season I was already able to play again and I was so excited. I ended up playing every year until my dance schedule got too busy.

Up to this day my left ankle still hurts while doing physical activity and it all started after I got my boot off. It hurts when I run, do turns, jumps, certain moves at dance, etc. Recently, I found out I have tendinitis in my left ankle because of what happened I believe.