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Lahrman's absence for hip surgeries poses challenge for Wauconda

A double-digit scorer completed a double just before Opening Night of his senior basketball season.

It wasn't double the fun for Wauconda's Zac Lahrman, however.

"I was looking really forward to (the season)," Lahrman said. "I worked all summer for it. I was all ready to try to get a regional championship."

Instead, Lahrman is spending the winter recovering from double-hip surgery.

Hip, hip ... no hooray for the Bulldogs.

"Losing him, with this group, it definitely hurt us," Wauconda coach Scott Luetschwager said.

If it wasn't bad enough for Wauconda losing bigs Ben Carlson and Ricky Sidlowski to graduation after a 15-13 campaign, which ended with a regional-final loss to St. Patrick, the unexpected subtraction of Lahrman meant the Bulldogs entered this season trying to replace 70 percent of their scoring and rebounding.

After splitting four games in Marengo's E.C. Nichols Holiday Classic, Wauconda takes a 4-6 record into 2016. The Bulldogs certainly miss the 6-foot-1 Lahrman, whose junior season included a 26-point effort against Clemente in the regional and 13 other games in which he scored double digits.

That, mind you, from a guy who was playing hurt. He missed two games during the Marengo tournament and another contest later in the season. Before every practice and game, he tried stretching out his groin, but that didn't help.

"Probably on a scale of 1-10, (the pain) was a 5," Lahrman said. "It was like a nagging thing."

It was a frustrating thing, too.

"We were told it was a groin, so we just tried to bring him along slowly," Luetschwager said. "You could tell the second half of the season that something was bothering him the whole time. He just grinded it out and fought through it. On the defensive end, he was wincing in pain a couple of times."

Lahrman first started experiencing discomfort in his hips toward the end of his freshman year. Every year, if the pain wasn't getting worse, it was getting more persistent.

"I was having growing pains," said Lahrman, who noticed felt the pain particularly when doing defensive drills. "Finally, this year I got X-rays. It turned out my hips were pretty bad."

On Oct. 1, Lahrman underwent surgery to correct his right hip. Then on Nov. 20, three days before Wauconda's season opener, he had his second hip operation, this one to fix the left one. Surgery, Lahrman says, included shaving the hip bone and inserting an anchor to repair a labrum tear in each hip. His left hip also required lengthening the hip flexor.

Following each surgery, he spent two weeks on crutches.

"My right hip is pretty much totally healed," Lahrman said. "My left hip was actually worse than my right hip. That one is still really weak, but it's walkable."

Lahrman won't play basketball this season. He goes back to the doctor later this winter and hopes he'll be cleared to start running. Then it's just a matter of finishing up school and deciding where he wants to attend college. Before his hip surgeries, he was looking into playing basketball at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Now, he's eyeing Illinois State, where he would be just a student.

"He was a player that could go to the rim as well as shoot from the outside," Luetschwager said. "You take away the inside, he was going to shoot from the outside. Take away his outside shot and close too much on him, and he was going to take it to the rim."

Zac is the last of the Lahrmans, Tom and Robin's youngest of three boys. He's played basketball since he was 8, when he would shoot around in the driveway with his brothers Bryce and Trevor.

Wauconda may have lost an all-conference-caliber player, but Lahrman is still a Bulldog. He might even hang out on the team bench in the second half of the season.

"I've been taking it pretty well, actually," Lahrman said. "It's not too bad."

That's the attitude you want to hear.

Hooray.

jaguilar@dailyherald.com

• Follow Joe on Twitter: @JoeAguilar64

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