Pulling herself out of BV North’s pool after the 500 yard freestyle, sophomore Isabel Holloway looks up at her time. 6:20.
It’s 42 seconds slower than her best time, 5:20. In a sport where fractions of seconds decide the difference between a first and second place, 42 seconds is huge. Even bigger because those 42 seconds represent a journey that began a year ago for Holloway, when she tore her left labrum — a vital tendon in her shoulder — and was forced to stop swimming or risk permanent injury.
Holloway was in eighth grade when she became serious about swimming for the Kansas City Blazers. Ahe was in Senior, the top competitive level for her age group. In the summer after eighth grade, Holloway qualified for nationals in her age group.
Because of continuous use wearing it down, her labrum tore in April of her freshman year. The injury forced her out of the pool right before she would begin a summer that would be crucial if she wanted to swim in college. She would have spent that summer swimming in a longer meter pool and making her fastest times.
“I wanted to get back as soon as I could, I felt like I was just going to get way too behind,” she said. “I was really stressed out about that.”
Just before the high school season started, Holloway was cleared by her doctor to swim again. Deciding that she would come back despite nerves due to how long she was gone, she practices every day for the East girls’ varsity swim team. But things have changed. She can’t go as fast as she wants to; she’s kept back by her still-healing shoulders.
While she was still unsure of whether or not she wanted swim again, Holloway emailed Cole thinking that she would swim JV because it had been so long. She thought that her shoulder would keep her from going as fast as she wanted to. He wanted her to swim varsity, though, where she would be with girls that swim at the same level she used to.
As a distance swimmer, she was used to swimming up to 9,000 yards in each practice for Blazers. Now, the most she can before her shoulder gives out and her arm goes numb is around 5,000. She’s not allowed to swim backstroke, breaststroke or butterfly — only freestyle. It takes some planning to make it work, whether they have to cut down the distance that she swims or decide that she should swim slower than she would otherwise.
“We communicate every practice at the beginning and after each set to see where her tolerance is for the training,” Cole said. “At times Isabel wants no modifications and just goes for the practice and tries to see what she is capable of doing. It’s always her call.”
Three full practices in a row might mean that Holloway takes it easy for the next one. Three is good enough, her coaches will tell her. Sometimes, it’s Cole that has to tell her to slow down or try to hold a pace instead of sprinting so she can finish a practice. That’s hard, though, because Holloway loves to go fast. So she reminds herself that she doesn’t want to injure herself even more, and she accepts it.
When she does need to sit out, Holloway isn’t idle. She’ll help Cole take times or discuss her training or what she needs to do to improve.
Holloway has gotten better. It took surgery and weekly physical therapy appointments, but this season, she’s been dropping up to five seconds from her 500 freestyle time with every meet. It’s a lot more than she expected when she thought she was only going to be able to swim JV.
“I’m surprised with how far I’ve come in the water,” Holloway said. “When I started [this season], I didn’t think I was going to be at the level I’m at right now. I didn’t think I was going to be able to do as much and I didn’t think that I was going to be at the speed that I’m at.”
After surgery to fix her labrum in August, Holloway realized that she wasn’t ever going to be able to get back to her peak level, where she was before she was hurt. Recovery from surgery was worse than she expected — Holloway couldn’t lift her arm above her head and the tiniest physical therapy exercises would send stabbing pain through her shoulder. And she had missed training time that she wasn’t going to be able to make up.
She started this season season at 6:02 for the 500 yard freestyle. On April 22, she swam it in 5:46. Though those are both varsity times, it’s not what she was swimming as an Elite Blazers swimmer — and it might not ever get there. Now that it’s been over a year, Holloway can look back and accept that getting back the same level might not be meant to be.
“It came to my mind a couple times when I was first injured that I wasn’t going to be able to, and it was more sad than [anything else],” she said. “But then I realized, a little after I got the surgery, I had come to peace with it.”
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