advertisement

Wauconda's Sefcik is back in action

A softball slugger couldn't bend down to pick up a pencil, let alone a bat or groundball.

"If I dropped something in school, I would have to say (to another student), 'Can you get that for me? Because I can't move,' " Brooke Sefcik, a Wauconda junior, said with a sheepish smile. "It was rough."

Not that she felt sorry herself. How could she? When visiting the Mayo Clinic to figure out why her back continued to ache, she saw young children battling severe disabilities and cancer.

"It made me feel like, 'OK, this (back injury) is not horrible,' " Sefcik said. "It (humbled) me a lot."

A year ago, Sefcik was wearing a hard-plastic brace that supported her back, which she thinks she might have injured during her freshman season of basketball. The brace was almost the size of a strike zone, from the hips to just below letters-high on a jersey.

Diagnosed with a fracture of her L5 vertebrae, Sefcik wore the brace for several months, 23 hours a day. Rarely did a ballplayer enjoy a shower more, for that's when Sefcik could remove the brace. When wearing it, she could barely tilt forward and couldn't lean back, at all.

"I pretty much waddled around," Sefcik said with a laugh. "I had to stand in class. I couldn't sit because (the brace) pinched my skin down."

Sefcik had a "Pinch-me-is-this-real?" softball season for Wauconda's varsity as a freshman. She started at third base and put together an all-conference season, flashing raw power at the plate and helping the Bulldogs win a Class 3A sectional championship. Now, after missing all but two early-season games at The Dome in Rosemont last spring, the girl with the bad back is ... back.

She's slimmed down and has been feasting on pitching. Through Thursday, she was hitting .419 (13-for-31) with a .538 on-base percentage, 5 home runs and 14 RBI. She also had walked eight times.

Those are impressive numbers for any player, especially one that Bulldogs coach Tim Rennels wasn't sure how much, if at all, she would be able to contribute with the bat this season.

"The walks she's been taking, it's like ice," said Rennels, who's played Sefcik at both third base and shortstop. "She'll squeeze the pitcher now. It makes her so much more dangerous, because they got to come to her. When they do, they're finding out she's got quick hands and she's explosive onto the ball. It just carries."

Sefcik comes from an athletic - baseball, specifically - family. Her dad, Jeff, who's the principal at Stanton School in Fox Lake, played baseball at Coastal Carolina University and was the head coach at Driscoll Catholic. Mom Christy was a runner. Oldest son Quinten pitched for Carmel Catholic and now for the University of Illinois, and sophomore Trevor, who's an infielder, made Wauconda's varsity this spring.

Brooke played baseball herself, before switching to softball when she was about 9. She wants to play in college, but her back threatened to kill that plan. She says she played in some pain her freshman season of softball. An X-ray revealed nothing, but the pain persisted. So at the beginning of her sophomore year, she had an MRI, which confirmed the L5 fracture.

"It hurt all the time," Sefcik said of her back.

She saw doctors at Children's Memorial Hospital and Mayo, before finally finding an answer from Dr. An at Midwest Orthopedics at Rush.

"The doctor at Children's said he would do the surgery, but he's done it only three times and one was successful, so we didn't want to do that," Sefcik said. "Then we went to Dr. An. He said he doesn't do surgery for this at all, especially someone my age."

After two injections to alleviate pain, she was comfortable to play softball again. Now, after months of physical therapy, lifting weights and eating healthier, she's a new person. She's 5 feet 9 and "big and strong," Rennels says.

She's shed, by her estimation, 25 pounds since her freshman year.

"After I got cleared to play again, I worked a lot on getting back in shape so I could maintain my health and my back," Sefcik said. "I worked with a personal trainer and hit every day."

Two years ago, Sefcik was more pull conscious at the plate and sometimes exhibited "wild swinging," Rennels says. This year, she's been a patient hitter with a better approach. And if there was any question whether she would be her old self, she answered that in her first at-bat of the season, in Tennessee, by jacking a home run.

"I wasn't expecting to come out this strong," Sefcik said.

All those months wearing that back brace helped. But, oh, what a relief it was when she could finally remove it permanently.

"I felt like a new person when I could move,"Sefcik said. "It was awesome."

Wauconda is enjoying its new-look Brooke.

jaguilar@dailyherald.com

• Follow Joe on Twitter: @JoeAguilar64

Article Comments
Guidelines: Keep it civil and on topic; no profanity, vulgarity, slurs or personal attacks. People who harass others or joke about tragedies will be blocked. If a comment violates these standards or our terms of service, click the "flag" link in the lower-right corner of the comment box. To find our more, read our FAQ.