LSU junior gymnast Ashleigh Clare-Kearney’s sophomore season ended 10 minutes after it started.
Clare-Kearney injured her foot performing on the floor exercise at the 2006 Super Six Challenge in Baton Rouge, the first meet of the Tigers’ season.
“[The injury] happened at the first event of the first meet,” Clare-Kearney said. “I was doing my routine fine, then in my last pass I fell. Everyone thought I hurt my head, because I fell on my head, but I in fact had hurt my foot when I was running.”
Clare-Kearney’s original diagnosis was a severe foot sprain, and she expected to return after missing a couple of meets.
“Not performing was difficult for Ashleigh,” LSU coach D-D Breaux said. “She wanted to be out there because she wanted to help her teammates.”
But as weeks passed by, Clare-Kearney’s pain failed to cease, causing everyone around the LSU gymnastics program to begin to wonder when the Manchester, Conn., native would return to action.
“That was such a difficult time for Ashleigh,” said Clare-Kearney’s roommate and teammate, junior Emily Ellis. “She would work so hard in practice and push herself so hard, and she would always end up being injured again. It was frustrating to see as a teammate and friend of hers.”
Clare-Kearney decided to take another X-ray in February to see what was causing the pain in her foot to continue.
This X-ray proved Clare-Kearney’s foot was broken, effectively ending her sophomore season.
“It was very hard to accept that it was a break,” Clare-Kearney said. “But there was nothing I could do about it, so I had to try my best to not let it bring me down.”
Once she found out about the break, Clare-Kearney immediately stopped trying to return to action and prepared for the surgery that would keep her out of action well into the summer.
With her injured foot in a protective boot following surgery, Clare-Kearney stayed around the gymnastics team the rest of her sophomore season, even though watching her teammates perform without her was a difficult reality.
“Knowing I wasn’t going to be out there the rest of the season made [watching the team] even harder,” she said.
While surgery may be a dooming reality for a gymnast, Breaux said she never doubted Clare-Kearney could complete her comeback.
“There was never a doubt in my mind that she would be back here contributing,” she said.
Now a year removed from surgery, Clare-Kearney is off to a great start in her junior season.
In her first meet back, she posted a perfect 10.0 on vault, letting her teammates and herself know she was ready to compete at the level she did in her freshman season, when she scored a 9.850 or better on 12 out of her 13 performances on vault.
“The doctor told me it was a hard injury to come back from,” Clare-Kearney said. “But I wasn’t going to let that get to me because I’m a fighter, and I was going to fight it with whatever it took.”
With the team now five meets into its 2007 season, Clare-Kearney is rated the nation’s No. 2 gymnast on vault and has won the All-Around in two meets for the Tigers this season.
“[The comeback] is just a testament to the character and the competitor in Ashleigh,” Breaux said. “She worked hard, and no one doubted that she would compete at the level she is capable of.”
Through the entire process, Clare-Kearney said she learned to never let anything get in the way of what she feels she can accomplish.
“I have learned that no matter what anybody says, you know yourself, and you know what you’re capable of,” she said. “I think that if you fight, and you push and you want it bad enough, you will get what you want.”
—–Contact Casey Gisclair at [email protected]