Sports Injuries

This Friday, (Umm.. that would be 7th of november. This post has been sitting in he drafts for quite some time!) I was waiting in the learning commons for Sachin and Andrew to go play squash with. But both of them were busy with their class presentation project. And I ran into Donnie, the Indonesian. I would insert a photo here, but its just so hard to get a good photo of him. Anyways, He said he's interested in playing squash. I didn't mind, it would be fun to see how well he could play. And for once it would be nice to play against a weaker opponent.

We went to the squash court and started playing. Donnie was used to playing lawn tennis, so he'd wait for the ball to bounce off the ground first, and would anticipate it to bounce higher. As expected, he'd miss the ball almost all the time. There are some reflexes that one develops after having played a game for long. And expecting the ball to bounce a particular way, sqing or spin a particular way is one of them. That's why, I was kinda glad I hadn't played tennis a lot. I wonder if Suraj would be able to get a hang of squash very easily either.

I think the first injury was on the very first day, Donnie tripped and fell on his knee as he was running to hit the ball. The next day, There was a big red bruise on his knee... Oooh!

Still, Donnie and I kept meeting up for squash more often. Then I think this was thursday the 13th that we were playing squash, and I happened to hit Donnie really haard with the ball. I believe I was the one who served first, and Donnie returned and stopped paying attention to where the ball or I was. And he ended up standing right in front of me. I didn't realize that either, untill I had hit the ball really hard and it smacked against Donnie's Lower back. Damn!

He wasn't angry. It was all part of the game. And there have been so many other incidents like this over time. Once he was running towards the ball, and I didn't have enough time to get out of the way, and he ended up bumping into me so hard that I fell on the ground. This other time, I was running to hit the ball that was very close to the wall, and after returning the ball, hit the wall really hard. I wasn't in a position where I could absorb the impact with my hands, so my right shoulder took most of the force.

Just the other day, I was browsing flickr and stumbled across a squash injury photo. And found out there's a whole group of photos of squash injuries. There's also a broken racquet in there. I hit my racket really hard against the wall and the floor multiple times too. This is something I've learned over time, "You can't be afraid of the wall" Because in squash, many times, the ball is really close to the wall, and if you're scared to take a swing at it, you'll always loose.