Excellence can develop in many fields of endeavor and in the case of 17- year-old softball pitcher Jennifer Reitemeyer, whose fastball moves at Thruway velocities, her skills are being restored by sports medicine and rehabilitation.?“We had a pretty big decision to make,” said Reitemeyer, of a time this spring when persistent pain in her right shoulder, her pitching shoulder, forced her to decide between “toughing it out” by pitching her senior season for Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park, or get surgery and rehabilitate her shoulder for college.?“
She had a hard choice and from my perspective made the smart decision,” said David P. Sucato, coordinator of the Northern Dutchess Hospital physical rehabilitation clinic in Hyde Park. “She got the surgery and is doing the rehab.”?Shaving a shoulder might sound strange, but it is not uncommon in sports medicine, where repetitive motion such as flinging a softball at 60 mph underhand tends to fray the joints, ligaments and muscles. The doctors at Northern Dutchess also “glued together” a small tear as part of an hour-long procedure that had Reitemeyer home wearing a sling that same afternoon. That led to what she described as almost the hardest part of the entire ordeal, resting to let healing begin.?“It definitely did drive me crazy, I couldn”™t drive, couldn”™t pitch, couldn”™t play the game,”  she said
A star softball player since she was 9 years old, with a scholarship to East Stroudsburg in Pennsylvania  she was familiar with Sucato from rehab work on minor matters over the years and she has tutored his daughters, who also play softball.?“They just started me stretching at first so I could get my range of motion back and put me on an arm bike and  bumped up  the resistance, made the stretchy bands  a little tighter and the weights a little heavier,” said Reitemeyer. “I just started throwing and hitting two weeks ago and I can start pitching next week.”?Sucato said that every patient in his clinic gets individual treatment plans based on their condition, age, and goals. “We see patients of all kinds from  sprained ankles to neurological recovery,”  but said his personal knowledge of Reitemeyer”™s plight provoked a little research. He said there is a body of sports rehabilitation literature on rehabilitation for softball players by position,  and that not surprisingly pitchers need to throw.
“I go out and throw with him, certain distances, then go inside and work with the weights and bands,” she said. “He always tells me I have to ease into it so I don”™t hurt myself.”?While throwing a softball 120 feet overhand is not what many people first consider when thinking about sports rehab, Sucato said it is the essential first step to rebuilding a pitcher”™s arm strength, and that such individualized treatment exercises are just part of the job.?“We try to figure out a person”™s problem is and set up an individual protocol and goals for that individual, Sucato said. “Making a positive difference in someone”™s life is what it is all about.”
