Injuries happen all the time in basketball at all levels. While trainers and coaches come prepared for the inevitable jammed fingers, sprained ankles, or jumper’s knees, having to remove a piece of the floor board from a player is not something you see every day.
In what can only be described as the definition of a freak accident, a 14-year-old basketball player in Middleton, Wisconsin, was impaled by a splinter from the floor when diving for a loose ball during a tournament on Sunday afternoon.
As you can see in the video, the young girl dove for the ball and was then incapable of getting up, telling her coaches and officials: “There’s a piece of wood stuck to me.” Via News3:
Hibner said that piece of wood broke in the middle, causing the splinters to push into the girl’s stomach region.
“It was 3 to 4 inches long and in some parts, maybe a quarter to a half inch deep,” Hibner said, describing the floorboard.
Hibner said surprisingly, there was no blood. The young player spent the night at American Family Children’s Hospital, and according to Hibner, there were no injuries to her internal organs.
The kicker in all of this is that the floor is only 15 years old, so there is no real reason why it should have suddenly come apart like that. In truly ridiculous fashion, the temporary solution to fixing the problem was to tape up the spot of the accident and surround it by garbage cans.
Thankfully the young player appears to be okay, and she will have a heck of a story to tell at parties in a few years.
(H/t News3)
