Her Hips Don't Lie

Pitcher Brooke Turner pitching
in a home game this season.
Photo courtesy of 49er Athletics 

At the beginning of the 2010 LBSU Softball season, pitcher Brooke Turner was recovering from elbow surgery and this season she is recovering from hip surgery that she had in the fall. The surgery was to repair a torn labrum in her hip.

The tear involves “the ring of soft elastic tissue, the labrum, that follows the outside rim of the socket of your hip joint,” as described by a hip tear article on Mayo Clinic. A symptom that athletes feel is a catching sensation in their hip along with hip pain as an indicator of an injury.

The labrum is found in both the shoulder and the hip joint but more information has been known about shoulder injuries. Recent developments of arthroscopic techniques to surgically manage the hip joint, “there has been increased recognition and awareness of hip labral tears,” said an article about Labral Tear of Hip Joint on about.com.

There are two ways a hip injury could happen and the way Turner’s injury happened was because of a saddening twisting motions that cause pain in the hip known as tramatic hip labral tear as defined on about.com.  A common motion of a pitcher is the twisting motion as they wind up to pitch the ball.

"We're going to take it day by day and see if she's ready," Coach Kim Sowder told the Daily49er. “I have confidence that she will be fine.”