Her Best Shot
December 6, 2011|Pursuits
When Meghan Merklein heard the pop, she knew she was through with basketball for a while.
Merklein already was a high-scoring hoops standout at Plainfield Central High School when, late in her sophomore year, she landed awkwardly after leaping for a rebound and badly injured her knee. Doctors would later tell her that she had torn both her anterior cruciate ligament and her medial collateral ligament. But the pop she heard when she injured the knee had already told her all she need to know.
“I knew I was done,” she remembered recently. “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”
Now, nearly six years later, Merklein is a senior pre-med major at Elmhurst leading the Bluejays women’s basketball team to one of its best starts ever. The Bluejays top scorer and rebounder, Merklein scored her 1000th career point last week in the team’s fifth win, a 64-58 road victory at Webster University. Two dates loom large in her plans for 2012: Merklein hopes to lead the Bluejays in NCAA tournament play in March; and in June, she intends to take to take her medical-school admission tests.
The pain she felt in the aftermath of her knee injury helps explain her determination to succeed at both challenges.
Merklein remembers crying in her doctor’s office not long after hurting her knee. It was becoming clear to her that recovering from her knee injury would require months of painful rehabilitation. And even then she would likely miss out on her junior year of basketball—prime time for athletes hoping to win the attention of college recruiters. At the time, all Merklein wanted to know how was quickly she could get back to game action. But the surgeon who repaired her knee, Dr. Gordon Nuber, warned her that there would be no short cuts.
“He was strict with me,” Merklein said. “He told me, ‘I’m not going to let you come back early.’”
As it turned out, rehabilitating the knee took seven months, though it would be more than a year before Merklein felt like her old athletic self. There were countless exercises to be repeated. Slowly, Merklein began to regain her range of motion. Even something as simple as running had to be relearned, the rhythm of it mastered again, so that one leg did not lag behind the other.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve done,” Merklein said of the rehab. But she became such a fixture in the workout room that her physical therapist often had to kick her out so she could get the rest she needed. “I wanted to play basketball again.”
When she finally returned to her high school team late in her junior year, she knew the rehab had been a success. She scored 12 points in her first game back. And the experience left her with a new professional goal: she wanted to be a doctor. She had noticed the way Nuber not only had repaired her physically, but had worked with her as an individual. When necessary, he had pushed her to work harder. Other times, he had cautioned her against trying to do too much too quickly.
“I thought about how my doctor helped me get back to playing basketball, how he pushed me to get better. I’d love to do that for someone else,” said Merklein, who is considering a career in sports medicine, among other specialties. “Having been through the surgery and the rehab may make me a better doctor someday.”
In its own way, preparing for medical school has proven every bit as challenging as her knee rehab. Merklein has had to learn to manage basketball workouts, internships arranged through the college’s Patterson Center for the Health Professions, and her studies. It has required the kind of effort she displayed during her rehab.
“Meghan’s always in the library, putting in her hours. She closes the place lots of nights,” said Tethnie Carrillo, Elmhurst’s women’s basketball coach. Carrillo, who has made it a goal for the Bluejays to have one of the best team grade point averages in the country, said Merklein’s determination sets an example for her younger teammates. “Her teammates see how hard she works.”
It’s no surprise that, having worked so diligently to get back to basketball, Merklein would like to extend her final season at Elmhurst for as long as possible. Last year’s team missed postseason tournament play in part because of too many early-season losses. This year’s team is off to a 5-1 start.
“We want to win a league championship and get into the NCAA tournament,” Merklein said.
As always, there is more work to be done.
