Villa Maria’s Katie Kelly perseveres through pain

The gymnastics career was so promising. Katie Kelly started when she was 4, and before she had turned 10, a coach predicted that if she stayed with the sport, she eventually would earn a college scholarship.

Along came the foot problems. Sever's disease in both heels, turf toe, a broken heel, bone issues in both feet. After three years of injuries, Kelly underwent an operation to shave a bone in each foot.

The transition to diving was so smooth. Kelly started lessons in the summer before her freshman year at Villa Maria Academy. The next winter, she placed third in the District 1 Class AA meet.

Along came the back problems. They started small, as if she had tweaked a muscle. The pain grew. Shooting pains. Tingling sensations in the legs. She had trouble bending over, climbing stairs, even walking. Compounding it all, doctors weren't totally sure what was wrong.

"When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

The quote was so fitting. After the foot problems halted her gymnastics career, and the severe back pain threatened her diving future, Kelly knew all about hanging on. That's why the Hurricanes diver chose FDR's words as her quote in Villa Maria's senior yearbook.

"It definitely describes my personality and the past, I don't know how many, years with the back and gymnastics," Kelly said. "It's definitely something that I've done, held onto the rope."

Kelly is in her third year diving for Villa Maria, having missed her sophomore season because of her back. Coming off third-place district finishes in 2008 and 2010, she wants to improve at least one spot and qualify for her first state meet.

"For her to endure the pain and continue to dive, and then say she wanted to do something about the pain and get back to diving is just an amazing thing," said her club coach, Ronn Jenkins of West Chester Diving.

Long energetic - her parents nicknamed her "Katie Cartwheel" and put the toddler in gymnastics to channel that energy - Kelly climbed the sport's levels as if they were small steps. She reached a high of Level 9, with only Level 10 and elite remaining, but by then, the injuries had started.

As Jenkins put it, gymnasts' bodies endure "an amazing, amazing amount of pounding." In Kelly's eight years of gymnastics, she was healthy for only the first five. She quit the sport after the foot operation, called accessory navicular surgery.

Kelly estimates that she had 11 casts on her feet over three years.

"I had just turned 12 when I had the surgery," said Kelly, 18, of East Goshen. "And I was going to go back, honestly, after the surgery. But then I kind of felt like my life is gymnastics, I don't ever hang out with friends, I want to try something different, and I'm sick of getting hurt."

She tried several activities - field hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and even ballet - but none really interested her. Then, shortly before starting high school, she and a friend decided to try diving.

Kelly made it through her freshman season at Villa Maria. The next summer, 2008, her back began to ache, and when the pain increased, she stopped diving. She isn't sure what caused the problem, but her mother, Sally, thinks it might have been connected to a dive months earlier in which Katie opened up too quickly and suffered whiplash and a concussion.

Next came a daunting array of doctor visits, tests, and treatment: MRIs, a CAT scan, X-rays, a brace, steroid injections, blood tests, acupuncture, chiropractic care, physical therapy.

"It was just to the point where I would wake up and be like, 'Well, is this going to be the day that I finally figure out what's wrong with me? Probably not.' I was completely hopeless," Katie Kelly said.

"Bending over was absolutely horrible. And all I wanted to do was get back to diving and get back to my normal activity and just be normal again."

A neurosurgeon, her mother recalled, said she should treat the injury "the way someone who was in a horrific car accident would have to, one painful step at a time."

Finally, Kelly visited a physiatrist, who thought she might have bursitis and recommended intense physical therapy and massage therapy. The regimen worked. She was cleared to return to diving late in the summer of 2009.

During her junior season, she suffered a stress fracture of her left tibia and a torn meniscus while doing physical therapy. An injection helped her continue diving, and last April, she underwent another surgery.

Kelly, now pain-free (except for recent Achilles tendinitis) and working with a personal trainer, has been recruited by some NCAA Division I programs. But she said she might go to Penn State or Georgetown and try to walk on.

Looking back at all she has been through, she said she feels "almost thankful."

"If I hadn't gone through all that grievance and stress and everything, I wouldn't be where I am today," Kelly said. "There are certain things that people get so upset about, and I'm just to the point that it doesn't even faze me, because I'm so mentally strong."