Softball player’s senior project aimed at preventing overuse injuries
Last season, Carter Thornton pitched Marsh Valley into the state softball tournament and wound up throwing herself into the operating room in the process.
Thornton toed the rubber in each and every game the Lady Eagles played, tossing 110 innings.
Towards the end of the season, she began experiencing pain in her arm and neck. She didn’t want to stop and no one was telling her to, so she just kept pitching.
But things took a turn for the worse during the final game of the tournament.
“Throughout the game, I knew I was going to be done after that game, because my arm was already hurting before, and I just knew that I was going to be done for a while after that,” Thornton explained.
“My arm got swollen and it got swollen into my face,” she said. “And it was kind of hard to breathe and it was kind of scary.”
For nearly a year Carter and her mother went from doctor to doctor searching for the issue and how to resolve it. Many thought nothing was wrong.
Eventually, the two went down to the University of Utah where a doctor diagnosed Carter with thoracic outlet syndrome, an injury that would require surgery.
Carter flew to Texas to have the procedure done.
“They took my first rib out and released my pec-minor muscle,” she said.
Now as a senior, Thornton isn’t playing while she recovers. Instead, she’s working on her senior project which is aimed at preventing overuse of softball players in the future.
“People think it’s a natural motion, and to a point it is, but when you’re throwing that fast and that many times, it’s not,” Thornton explained.
She believes that setting innings and pitch limits as well as carrying several pitchers should help eliminate the issue moving forward.
“I should’ve not pitched every game. I think I would go back and pitch every game at state, but I don’t think I’d pitch every game during the season.”
Thornton said she feels way better after the surgery and plans on continuing her softball career at Walla Walla Community College in Washington.
