Senior Ali Horsager prepares herself for her routine on the balance beam at her team’s first competition. Horsager climbs onto the balance beam, excited to perform her routine with a new dismount she practiced. The unexpected happened while Horsager was performing a front flip with one and a half twists; her feet hit the floor before her body was done twisting. Everything kept moving, but Horsager’s feet were still.
“As soon as I did it, I could feel something was wrong and I knew it wasn’t going to be good,” Horsager said.
Horsager stood up, finished, and presented to the judges at the end of her routine. She fought off the pain in her right leg and the swarming thoughts about what had just occurred at the University of Minnesota campus on Jan. 7. After she presented, she immediately sat down on the mat.
“We knew something was wrong and rushed to the mat immediately,” Horsager’s head coach, Whitney Beck, said.
The only thing running through Horsager’s mind on the mat was if she was going to be able to continue gymnastics.
“I was worried if I was going to be able to finish or not,” Horsager said. “I was thinking ‘am I going to be done with gymnastics completely or will I be able to come back?’ Everything was going through my head at the same time.”
After a trip to the doctor, Horsager found out that she had torn her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and would need a six to nine month recovery process. Horsager was put on crutches right away for a month. After that, she had surgery and then crutches for another two weeks. After the surgery, Horsager couldn’t put any weight on her shoulders, so she had to put pressure on her foot and had to walk without help for the first time in months.
“I couldn’t move very fast and then I had to have people carry my backpack around for me and it just wasn’t very pleasant,” Horsager said.
After she finished two months of physical therapy, she had a couple weeks off and then started a program that lasted three months and helped her get back into gymnastics.
“It was really hard to stop what I’ve been doing for 14 years and just recover,” Horsager said.
Beck has seen Horsager working hard in the gym even with the limitations she faces.
“You can certainly see the frustration sometimes,” Beck said. “It’s a natural part of the process and no one is immune to it and it can definitely be a struggle to push your body to do what you know it could before and trying to judge whether or not it’s ready for activity.”
Best friend and teammate sophomore Sienna Crouse supported her because Crouse was in the same situation. Crouse suffered a fractured hip in gymnastics. Crouse has supported Horsager and noticed how far she has come since January.
“She has come a long way,” Crouse said. “She’s been out for a long time and usually when you’re out for that long you forget how to do some things, but she is coming back strong.”