More power to Bauer as she battles injury

Her right shoulder sports thin bandages thanks to surgery last week and will be sling-ridden for the next month. Which makes Lydia Bauer not much use to her high school girls basketball team.

Yet, there she was last Saturday night at Lake Zurich. She sat on the home team's bench with a colorful, tiny pillow -- a secret Santa gift from then-teammate Katrina Froehlich two years ago -- supporting her wounded limb, while she supported her team during the Sweet 16 tournament.

There was Bauer at practice this week, sitting and watching her Lake Zurich teammates, including kid sister Audrey, work on plays that should have included her.

There she's been since her junior season officially ended Jan. 22, when she had shoulder surgery, less than a week after dislocating it for the second time since last summer.

Bauer is a lefty, so she can't even work on her opposite-hand ball skills.

"Bennett always jokes," she said of coach Chris Bennett. "He's like, 'I wish (the injury) would have happened to your left shoulder so you could have worked on your right-handed dribbling and your right-handed shooting.' That's one of my weaknesses -- right-handed dribbling."

Bauer could be home, or somewhere else, doing whatever. She could have abandoned her teammates. The next athlete who does that after a season-ending injury won't be the first to do it, nor the last.

Mind you, Bauer is the star of the team.

But her ego is tinier than the surgical holes on her shoulder. She insists on being a team player, even though she can't play.

"I think you can still learn from practice," Bauer said at practice Monday. "You can still sit here and listen to coaches and (watch) what they do. I think that even though you are injured, you can always learn about basketball so that when you do come back, you don't miss anything that the team's been working on."

No wonder she's a great player. Forgot the 6-footer's basketball skills (12.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game this season) and athleticism (three years varsity in both basketball and volleyball, plus underclass softball). Never mind that she defends as well as anyone in the county.

Bauer's attitude and maturity make her a dream to coach.

"She's like having another coach on the floor," Bennett said of his two-time all-area guard/forward. "She understands situations. I wish she'd be a little more talkative, but she explains things to kids and they feed off it, even when she's not playing."

Bauer was playing basketball at the University of Illinois last summer when she dislocated her right shoulder. Lake Zurich was playing Fremd, and Bauer says she was cutting from the elbow to the block and tried to do a swim move to get past a defender.

"I think her arm and my arm hit, and her arm came with a stronger force and popped (the shoulder) out," Bauer said. "I didn't do much rehab on it because I didn't really know what to do or how to rehab it. I saw a doctor but he wasn't a sports/athletic (specialist). He didn't really know what to do with it."

Her right shoulder was holding up well until that practice about three weeks ago.

"We were doing 'tough guy' drill, where the player dribbles into the middle of two people," Bauer said. "The two girls on the outside just slap at the ball and slap at your arms. I was one of the outside people that was supposed to be slapping. What I remember is, my arm was up and whoever was in the middle kind of just brought the ball through and hit (the shoulder) and it went out again."

The pain was excruciating enough that Bauer was taken to the hospital, where her shoulder was popped back in.

Her doctor explained that once you dislocate your shoulder, there's a 90-percent chance that it's going to happen again. If it happens a third time, the percentage spikes to 98 that it'll happen a fourth time.

Surgery was inevitable for Bauer. It was just a matter of when she was going to have the repair work done.

"I decided to have it right away because if I had to rehab it for two weeks, you're missing two of the four weeks (left in the regular season), and I play softball and AAU basketball," Bauer said. "It wasn't like in the spring there'd be a break to (have surgery). I just decided to get it done now because there really wasn't a good time to have it done."

Without Bauer, the Bears aren't the same power. They were 14-5 with her. They're 4-4 without her, with only games against Stevenson (Saturday night) and Round Lake (Tuesday night) remaining in the regular season.

"She was our other floor leader besides Peggie (Parhas)," junior guard Olivia Allen said.

"She understands the game well, first of all," Bennett said. "She's definitely a calming influence out on the floor because she knows what to do in what situations."

Bauer's current situation isn't easy. But she's not feeling sorry for herself.

"Yeah, it's tough," she said. "But there's nothing you can do about it, so there's no point in sitting and sulking about it. You just got to move on and hope that the time flies by fast."

With her attitude, it will.