Notre Dame’s Jack Hoagland, the 2021 ACC Championships Most Valuable Swimmer on the men’s side of the pool, missed the team’s season-opening meet with a broken wrist.
Hoagland tells SwimSwam that he broke his scaphoid in a scooter crash, an injury that usually occurs after a fall onto an outstretched hand according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
According to the Hospital for Special Surgery, US News & World Report’s top-ranked hospital in orthopedics, these fractures take an average of 12 weeks to heal if treated immediately, which is about twice as long as the average upper body fracture, and longer if not treated immediately.
While Hoagland didn’t have an exact timeline for his return to competition for the Irish, he said he’s “working his way back into it.”
Hoagland, a junior, was a perfect 3-for-3 in individual events at the 2021 ACC Championships, winning the 500 free, 400 IM, and 1650 free. His 96 individual points, the max available, was a whopping 42 better than Notre Dame’s next-best performer at that meet, where the team tied with Georgia Tech for 7th place overall.
At the 2021 NCAA Championships, his first, Hoagland was 10th in the 500 free, 11th in the 400 IM, and 5th in the 1650 free. He also swam on Notre Dame’s 16th-place 800 free relay.
As a freshman in 2020, Hoagland went from a relatively unheralded recruit to a distance star, taking 3rd in the 500 free and 2nd in the 400 IM and 2nd in the 1650 free at his inaugural ACC Championships.
After canceling their first meet of the season due to the untimely and still-unexplained departure of their head coach Mike Litzinger and associate head coach Aaron Bell, Notre Dame beat Pittsburgh and Cleveland State comfortably at home over the weekend. Their next meet is scheduled for Friday, October 22, when they host Purdue before a big ACC matchup with the defending conference champions Louisville on November 5.
My son, also Jack fractured his scaphoid on his skateboard 😡 Amazing hand surgeon removed the dying bone, replaced with bone from his humorous, inserted a pin, then rerouted a vein to “feed” the new bone. He plans on swimming Winter Jr in December. It’s a delicate surgery, I wish Jack the best of recoveries.
Oh man, dude’s gonna get some good kick work in!
Wasn’t this similar to what happened to Finke a bit ago?
Exactly what happened inMay 2019
Scooters and swimmers never mix. I wish you a speedy recovery.
Scooters, swimmers and swimmers who hit things with a closed fist never mix!
Scaphoid injuries can really be tough. Low blood flow so they can take forever to repair and very well may never be the same again.
Get in touch with Bobby Finke, he can tell you about his rehab. Conference is a long way off.
They’re tricky…or can be. A large portion of it depends on the exact location of the fracture within the bone –> presence or absence of displacement of the bone / shearing of the arterial blood supply. It’s a weird little bone with (predominantly) a retrograde blood supply (the artery loops back in). If the arterial blood flow is not compromised, healing is relatively simple (cast / M-spike if I recall correctly). If that blood supply was compromised, that’s a different story (risk of bone necrosis secondary to the absence of blood flow ~ avascular necrosis).