Tuesday, April 23, 1996
Redshirt freshman has persevered through injury to keep
playing
By Mark J. Dittmer
Daily Bruin Contributor
The Western Qualifying tournament for the women’s water polo
national championships is approaching, and the Bruins have a lot of
freshmen who have never been there before. But the most excited
member of the team is not one of the true freshmen, but rather the
redshirt freshman.
That is because Jennifer McFerrin has felt the excitement of the
end-of-the-year tournaments without actually being there. Last
year, she practiced with the team up until the time of the
qualifying tournament, and she practiced with them after it.
But McFerrin could not go to the tournament because she was
ineligible  she had redshirted the season because back when
practices started in September of 1994, her shoulder betrayed
her.
McFerrin’s struggles against her shoulder may tell something
about the kind of person she is.
McFerrin came to UCLA  along with Nicholle Payne  as
the first two scholarship women’s water polo players. Her high
school team had won the state championship the previous spring, and
she spent part of her summer in Cuba, playing for the junior
national team.
She was ready to jump into collegiate water polo, and to excel
in the same way. But that was when her shoulder, always her
Achilles’ heal, pulled her back down to earth.
"See, this is everyone else’s shoulder, and this is my
shoulder," she explains, holding her fist out as the bone of her
shoulder, and placing her other hand on top of the fist as the
joint, or the shoulder socket. When showing a normal shoulder, her
hand grabs her fist firmly, but when showing her shoulder, the hand
releases the fist and the shoulder is held in only by the muscles
between the joint and the socket.
That shoulder was always in opposition to McFerrin. But she had
learned to get by.
"I’ve had tendonitis," she said. "My shoulder would keep
dislocating. It would dislocate and then I would just pull it back
in, but when it came out it would rip the muscles between the joint
and the bone."
Through most of her career, she played through it, but the
muscles were loosening the entire time.
Those muscles are the only things keeping reins on the shoulder.
But as practice started that fall, McFerrin’s shoulder ripped at
its reins, trying to get loose. After just one or two days of UCLA
practices, she was in so much pain she had to get medical
treatment, and she was told the injury required surgery.
The surgery could not make the joint close over the bone.
Instead, the surgery cleaned the muscles holding the shoulder
together, and she was told to vigorously rehabilitate and
strengthen the muscles. So she rehabbed with a vengeance, to
strengthen the muscles that hold the shoulder in check.
She also refused to let the injury stop her from doing what she
wanted to do  and she wanted to play water polo.
A few weeks after her surgery in October ’94, McFerrin was back
practicing with the team, playing with one arm in a sling.
"When I did get into practice, I just did random stuff Â
drills, legs."
Her arm stayed in a sling for the entire 1995 season. But by the
time the Bruins got back from their fifth-place showing at the
national championships, her arm was back in action with the rest of
her body.
The shoulder is still wild. She has tendonitis in both shoulders
now, but she once again has things under control.
And she is finally playing water polo. Over the summer, she went
to Canada to play with the junior national team. She spent the rest
of her summer in Modesto, playing water polo.
And she has been able to play collegiate water polo, too. In
essence, the running theme of her life seems to be water polo these
days. And this season has been everything her true freshman season
was not.
"She gets by with a lot of desire and aggressiveness, being
intense, things like that," UCLA head coach Guy Baker said.
McFerrin has been named first-team All-MPSF for the Southern
Division. She plays both offense and defense equally well.
"I’ve been happy with her play. Very enjoyable to coach," Baker
said. "I like players like that. If I was in a fight, well,
Jennifer’s that type of person you want right by your side."
As for the shoulder, McFerrin is trying a new approach now.
"I try to take care of it. I ice it every day after practice,"
she said.
PATRICK LAM/Daily Bruin
Though she has tendonitis in both shoulders, UCLA’s redshirt
freshman Jennifer McFerrin is once again playing water polo.