THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 19, 1995 TAG: 9512190392
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
A broken neck. Beautiful. Dr. Sandra Glasson didn't even want to think about it.
It was 9 o'clock on a Colorado Springs morning in May 1994, Glasson's first day as an orthopedic specialist for USA Basketball. And there at her feet, unconscious, lay the great Sheryl Swoopes, merely the first women's basketball player to have a shoe named after her.
Moments before, during a supposedly harmless drill at the national team trials, Swoopes had plowed into a basket support, leading with the crown of her head.
Glasson, on leave from her post with Vann-Atlantic in Virginia Beach, saw it all. She was frightened, particularly after Swoopes came to and said her left arm was numb.
``Nobody moved her. We barely let her breathe,'' Glasson says, recalling the emergency procedures she quickly directed. Cervical collar, back board, sand bags wedged around Swoopes' head to ensure perfect stillness during the ambulance ride.
``I thought she had broken her neck,'' Glasson says. ``I knew it would be career-ending for her.''
Glasson relates the story in her den, a cocker spaniel resting on her shoulder, and of course it has a happy ending. Swoopes suffered only a concussion and remains one of the players upon whom the U.S. has hung its hopes for Olympic gold in Atlanta next summer.
Glasson recently saw Swoopes again in Norfolk when the national team visited, and they laughed about the accident and the aftermath - Swoopes sleeping in Glasson's room so she could be awakened throughout the night.
But Glasson shakes her head. ``I don't think she ever realized how serious it could've been.''
Scares like that Glasson doesn't need when she rejoins Swoopes and the team next month for a three-game, 13-day trip to Russia.
It is yet another part of Glasson's growing profile among U.S. national teams, a presence that has the former University of Virginia point guard under consideration to be a host physician for the '96 Games.
At 36, Glasson is less than three years removed from her residency at Duke, but she already stands out in the exclusive domain of female orthopedic surgeons in sports medicine.
Through a boost from the head physician at Duke, Glasson began accompanying U.S. national soccer teams on international tours. Then two years ago, a mutual friend put Glasson and USA Basketball women's director Lynn Barry in touch with each other.
Barry has sent Glasson, a New Jersey native, to Israel, France and Taiwan with national teams, and now Russia. The Olympic team will visit China and Australia before Atlanta and, though USA Basketball uses different specialists, Glasson hopes to be along for those rides too.
It's all volunteer duty. As as always, Glasson wants it all to be fun and games. She wants to see sights. Eat different foods. Sit at the end of the bench and admire world-class athletes, marveling at the leaps female players have taken since she played at Virginia from 1978 to 1982, when the march of talent turned Glasson from a freshman starter into a senior benchwarmer.
The last thing she wants to do is examine anterior cruciate ligaments or otherwise traumatized joints.
``I hope I don't have to be busy,'' Glasson says. ``I've had a good cloud over me, a very injury-free cloud, on international trips.''
Sports injuries keep her hopping plenty in Virginia Beach, where she sees a growing number of problems in children related to overuse, tendinitis and such.
It's a disturbing by-product of organized sports at tender ages, she says, and also of earlier specialization in a single sport to pursue scholarships and other elite levels.
It's a dilemma. Physiology puts female athletes, basketball players especially because of the pounding, at greater risk of knee injury than men.
Then again, without years of specialized labor, Sheryl Swoopes wouldn't be Sheryl Swoopes. And Glasson would be seeing Siberia with a decidedly less skillful and exciting group of women. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Sandra Glasson of Virginia Beach watched the
wave of basketball talent sweep her from the starting five to the
bench at Virginia 15 years ago. Now she wants to see firsthand what
that talent can do as she accompanies the U.S. women's national
basketball team around the world, and maybe to the Atlanta Games.
by CNB