'I'm so glad I can run': Bloomington North's McDivitt doing it on torn ACL

Hundreds of runners stood ready at the start line for one in a series of girls' races in the Nike XC Twilight Meet at Terre Haute last Saturday and chances were, every one of them had two intact ACL’s in their knees.

Save for at least one, anyway.

The idea that Emma McDivitt would run in that race, let alone set a career best 21:03 that day, would have made as much sense to Bloomington North head coach Justin Helmer on July 1 as to just why the injury happened in the first place.

Every day, thousands of high school girls’ basketball players in Indiana leap for rebounds, to block a shot or finish a layup. They land. They go on.

But in late June, McDivitt was nearing the end of a long practice with her club team, DistinXion, in Washington when she went up for a rebound, came down with no contact and tore her ACL. Further examination the next day showed a small tear in her meniscus and lots of bone bruising around it, she said.

So cross country season and most of her basketball season and maybe track season were all but gone, right? McDivitt’s father just happens to be a physical therapist who works on knees. The tear was not total and it was still attached to the femur and tibia as it should be. So she had options. Seriously.

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“Then I found out I could make the decision if I wanted to get surgery right away or try to rehab and run,” McDivitt said. “I decided it would be a better idea for me to run cross country.”

It was a pragmatic, if not painful, decision. But giving up just one season was better than two, maybe three. Basketball was the one to go.

“It was definitely emotional,” she said. “It was tough. But I was really grateful that I had this decision to make.

“Every time I finish a race this season, I’m so glad I can run, because when I first tore my ACL, the first thing I thought about was my cross country season. It wasn’t, ‘Oh, shoot, basketball.’ I was on the basketball court, but thinking cross country.”

She’s still thinking about it as she prepares this week to run in Saturday’s Bedford North Lawrence Sectional.

A way forward

When Helmer first heard of McDivitt’s injury he naturally thought he’d just lost one of his top seven and a key senior for a rebuilding team running a lot of youth behind its established top three.

“Then we got back together and we were talking and she was weighing her options,” Helmer said. “She’s saying, ‘I might be able to run.’ And I was like, ‘So explain to me, what does that look like? How does that happen?’

“So we talked some more with her family. The fact her dad is physical therapist who worked on knees and that’s where the information is coming from: ‘If you think you can do it and your dad thinks it’s safe, then I’m on board and help guide me though this.’”

McDivitt had weighed her options and hers wasn’t the safest path. She could have undergone surgery right away, missed cross country and maybe be healthy enough by the end of basketball season. Maybe. Or she comes back too soon, a real danger as someone who is always pushing herself, and gets hurt again and track is gone, too.

Or she toughs out cross country, gets surgery, and hopefully has a track season. With therapy, her knee could eventually withstand straight ahead running. So she got to work.

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All of July was rehab, starting with getting her knee to bend as it should again, then hopping on a stationary bike, then an elliptical. A tiny bit of jogging, two minutes, then five, on a road, then on grass. Steps became strides.

“Her body is strong,” Helmer said. “She was doing physical therapy and I knew she wasn’t skipping anything, working one-on-one every single day at home. And she’d report to me.”

“By August, I was starting to run with the team again,” McDivitt said.

Back among friends

McDivitt started running as a sixth grader when she lived in Brownsburg and the family moved to Bloomington late in the fall of her sophomore year, soon enough to join the basketball team and run track but too late for cross country.

Being involved in sports helped her settle in and make friends and the distance girls became a second family with the running culture and support they provided.

“It gave me a sense of community because I didn’t know anyone in Bloomington,” McDivitt said.

So she wanted to be with them in her last go-round in high school athletics.

“Another big factor was the team,” McDivitt said. “I knew these were the people that I wanted to spend my senior year with.”

It takes a special kind of athlete to make such an unusual choice and chase what might seem to be an improbable goal. After all that work, Helmer won't be surprised to see her in his top five at some point, a senior voice, and maybe even an inspiration to his other runners.

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"Another thing about Emma, very few could do what she's doing," Helmer said. "Part of that is her maturity. She's really good at speaking up, 'Here's where I'm at. This hurts. That's fine.' She's honest about what she can handle and she hasn’t done too much too soon.

"And not only that, she's mentioned she likes to push herself. She's a strong athlete who spent high school trying to be the best athlete she can be."

The journey is far from over. Surgery is coming and more rehab work will follow as she aims to get healthy enough to run track.

"My birthday is a week after (cross country) season ends," McDivitt said. "So I'm going to wait until that's over so I can have fun on my birthday."

More steps to take

Cross country is often not run on flat surfaces, so that was a concern when she took to the Brown County course for her first race of the season.

“It’s definitely something I think about,” McDivitt said. “I find myself watching the ground. One miss-step can really mess up a lot.”

And it took some time for her to not think about the knee itself. It announced its presence harshly the first few times she pushed it.

“I don’t really think about it anymore,” McDivitt said. “At first, it was sore when I was first getting back into training. It was swelling a little bit and when it’s swelling, the muscles don’t work right and it would feel loose and it would feel like it was shifting around.

“I just had to make sure I was doing therapy and icing to keep the swelling down and I was fine.”

After that first race, a 21:26, she was as hard on herself as ever.

“I think honestly, I was just a little disappointed because I want my time to be this and, ‘Man, why can’t I do that?” McDivitt said. “But my parents were like, ‘Emma, you’re running a 5k and you have a torn ACL!’

“Just having people supporting me, and that has reminded me I was pretty lucky that I can do this. But I’m still tough on myself and I want to be where I was.”

Bedford North Lawrence Sectional

TEAMS: Bloomington North, Bloomington South, Edgewood, Lighthouse Christian, Eastern Greene, Bedford North Lawrence, Bloomfield, Eastern (Pekin), Mitchell, Orleans, Salem, West Washington.

RACE TIMES: 10:30 a.m. girls, 11:15 a.m. boys

TICKETS: $7 https://gofan.co/app/events/721344

ADVANCEMENT: Top five teams and top 10 individuals not on top five teams head to Edgewood Regional on Oct. 15.

Contact Jim Gordillo at jgordillo@heraldt.com and follow on Twitter @JimGordillo.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington North's Emma McDivitt is winning with torn ACL