Baton Twirling Injuries

Alyssa Davis

Davis was a junior in high school when she was practicing as usual about two months before her last competition before nationals, the one she needed to be at to qualify for nationals. As usually she was in the gym working on her routines when she was doing a leap section and fell. She feel directly on her knee and could not get up. After she found out she had dislocated her knee she had her surgery, six weeks later she was back in practice with only two weeks until a huge competition. This meant she was working harder then ever pushing through the pain she felt. Davis was able to finish her season, winning a title. Although technically in the competition world twirlers get four weeks off after nationals and the start of the new season, most coaches expect you to practice during that and keep up with your routines and tricks. This meant Davis did not really have a break. "I was always having pain in my knee, but there were bigger things for me to worry about at the time, or so I thought." About two days before Christmas, and a month before the first competition Davis needed another surgery. The pressure she had been putting on her knee between the two surgeries caused he knee to much worse. Making it so she was going to be out even longer, forcing her to loose out on her senior year of baton. "Baton was my entire life, I started twirling when I was three and all of a sudden it was over, the team was let down and I though everyone would be mad, turns out everyone else was more worried about my health and my knee then I was." She admitted that she never thought her injury would be bad and that if she kept going it would fix itself, a lot twirlers and athletes live by this method making their injuries worse.

Dori Robertson

Robertson started her twirling career when she was three years old, twirling all the way through her childhood until she graduated. After graduation she began to coach, continuing her baton career. She witnessed many injuries through her years as a coach and a twirler, always thankful that she never suffered any major injuries, the worse she had was a sprained ankle, until she hit her forties. Early forties she began to have knee problems and went to see a doctor, when they told her she was going to need two knee replacements she was shocked. "I use to have pain throughout my knees when I twirled, but it would go away after a while so I never thought much of it." She continued to push off having her surgery for as long as possible, until she was in her late forties, early fifties. "The difficulty for me was I had two weeks free in my schedule for a six week recovery time." Seeing that majorette season started in August and ended in November, then competition season started December and ended in July, plus there was practices in between for them. Also, Robertson's doctors could not do both knees at the same time, so she had to go through this processes twice. "Two years in a row, during the beginning of competition season I was in a wheel chair, waiting for my knees to heel." Those two years for Robertson she was mostly in a gym, between the practices she had with her team and physical therapy sessions.

Graicen Siler

Siler is a fifteen year old who has been twirling since she was five years old. When she was thirteen she started to feel a lot of pain in her hip whenever she twirled. "At first I pushed it off, I was already the youngest on the team and did not want to seem like a crybaby, I just dealt with the pain." After about two months she told her mom about the pain and her mom, a nurse, decided to take her to the hospital. At the hospital after doing multiple scans they found that she had a hip flexor strain in her right hip, her dominant one. Although the Doctor has told her to stop doing so much on her hip and go slow, for the last two years she has continued her normal twirling routines. " I know I am going to have consequences when I am older from continuing, but at the moment I am to focused on getting a Nation title to quit. For the last ten years baton has been my entire life and I could not imagine giving it up now." Siler is not sure on what will happen in the long run, but she continues to not give up baton.