Sidelined Wyoming players make most of recovery time

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) - For a team as impervious to the injury bug as Wyoming has been this season, it can be easy to forget there still are players sidelined by injuries.

The Cowboys received a painful reminder against Air Force when defensive end Carl Granderson left the game with a season-ending ACL tear, but even before that, they were there.

Well, not there, exactly.

They weren't on the field, and when the rest of their teammates were in the weight room, they weren't there, either.

They were in a dark room with nothing but six racks of weights, some dumbbells and a library full of heavy metal music to work with.

They were on Shutter Island.

Jordan Betz describes Shutter Island as a secret club.

"Invite only," the assistant strength coach said.

To healthy players, it's some weird thing happening outside their line of vision.

"I try not to be over there," linebacker Lucas Wacha said.

For newly injured players such as Granderson, it's their new way of life.

"They introduced it to me the first day," Granderson said, "and I was like, 'What the heck is a Shutter Island?'"

Technically, Shutter Island is a small weight room in War Memorial Fieldhouse where all the players with long-term injuries put in their workouts. There's actually a second Shutter Island in the Arena-Auditorium, and like the original, it's small, dark and away from everyone else.

The name is a nod to the 2010 Martin Scorcese psychological thriller, which Betz considers one of his favorite movies.

"It's kind of a running joke," he said. "They're kind of secluded from practice."

Its namesake implies that the workout group is in some sort of solitary confinement, which, to an extent, it is.

But there's also a sense of community among the injured players.

"You're going to have those days when you're hurting a whole lot and then you're going to have days when you're feeling great," said running back Kellen Overstreet, who is recovering from knee and shoulder surgery. "It's when you're in those low times we have that Shutter Island group and we come together. It's just great to be a part of that family, just to lift each other up in those hard times."

The operative word being "lift."

Residents of Shutter Island can't participate in team drills or go through full workout routines. What they can do is add muscle to the parts of them that are healthy.

"We use whatever they've got," Betz said. "So if the dude has both arms hurt, both legs hurt, he's going to get a strong neck and abs."

For the current members, that has meant a lot of work from the waist up.

"Everybody's got lower-body injuries, so everybody's lifting all upper body," said linebacker Adam Pilapil, who missed the first six games of the year with an ankle injury. "It's kind of the glory muscles."

Granderson already had added 43 pounds of lean muscle between his freshman and sophomore seasons. The once-lanky end might be unrecognizable upon checking out of Shutter Island.

"I like lifting weights," he said. "So when I get buff, it's going to be over with."

Pilapil noticed significant gains in just two months of working with Betz.

"Lifting upper body for an hour and half, two hours, every single day, it's crazy what he's been able to do," Pilapil said.

Said Betz: "They can see that the injury is awful, but they're going to get something really good out of it. We just try to create that every day, where they have something to look forward to and are seeing it in the mirror."

Embracing that part of the recovery process is critical. Because being stuck on the sidelines can be a flat-out miserable experience.

When the Wyoming defense first took the field earlier this year in Lincoln, Nebraska, Trevor Meader took a knee.

The defensive end is a Lincoln native and went to Lincoln Southwest High School, but because of that knee, his one chance to play at Memorial Stadium came and went with him as a spectator.

"Not being able to play, just standing on the sideline, that was probably one of the toughest things I've had to do in my life," he said.

Meader, a transfer from Wayne State College in Nebraska, redshirted as a Cowboy in 2014. Before the 2015 season, he injured his knee. After undergoing surgery that September, he injured the knee again the following spring. He had surgery on his meniscus in April, and on his ACL in June.

Meader has taken his second recovery more slowly just to be safe, but he said he's feeling a lot stronger, even if the knee will never feel like it used to.

And if all goes according to plan, he will finally get to step on the field in brown and gold for the first time in 2017.

"The more and more that I'm around the team, really, the easier it is," Meader said. "But at the same time, it's also depressing to be around there and not be able to contribute."

Pilapil, a sophomore weak-side linebacker, was covering Jacob Hollister on a play-action pass when he stepped on the back of the tight end's foot during practice.

His ticket to Shutter Island had been punched. He returned to action last Saturday against Nevada.

"Football is football and from the start of your freshman year if you don't redshirt, you've got 48 guaranteed opportunities," Pilapil said.

While the isolation of Shutter Island can take some getting used to, the biggest adjustment is no doubt the soundtrack.

Betz's genre of choice is heavy metal. Loud heavy metal.

"I just believe the heavier the music, the heavier the lifting," he said. "So let's just set the environment."

Parkway Drive, Chelsea Grin, Slayer and Slipknot are some staples of the rotation.

"I'm not a big fan of that," Granderson said. "It just kind of goes through my brain now."

New members have requested a change of genre before, but they've had no luck.

"The veterans in the group, so to speak, are like 'No, this is what it is, this is what we do: Heavy music, heavy lifting,'" Betz said. "It starts to grow on them. All of them start to - maybe they just tell me that, but all of them start to like it."

The key is buying in. None of Shutter Island's inhabitants want to be injured, but while they are, they have to embrace that small, dark world in order to come back stronger than ever.

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Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com