What we did last week:

This week was a week of learning rather than necessarily did. Wakefield is finishing up the look of the blog and taking away some things and refining things. I continued to talk to my dad about some of the technicalities of surgery and different severity levels of the injuries. Also, Wakefield has continued to do physical therapy on his shoulder.

What we will be doing next week:

Next week is the last week for the project. It is also a short week because I will be leaving town. So that means we will have to finish by Thursday. We will spend the majority of the time wrapping up the website and it will be nice to see all of our hard work paid off.

What we did this week:

This week wakefield and I did not complete as much as past weeks because it was our winter break so we went back to school on Wednesday.  So the main thing was continuing to work on the website. However we did learn that the rules of high school baseball have changed to help protect pitchers arms. In the past, the amount of required rest days used to be determined by innings a week. however the amount of pitches thrown is the issue.  But now it is determined by the numbers of pitches you throw in a particular outing. Which is a big step in protecting arms because it forces coaches to limit how many times their top 3 pitchers can play. Also, yesterday our baseball team had a thirty minute talk on pitching philosophy which basically is the importance of what we throw and how we protect our arm. Overall, this week we may not have gotten a whole lot done on paper but we learned a lot. below is the image of the pitch count rule through all age groups.



 

What we did:



This week, Price and I didnt get quite as much done as we would have liked. We worked some on the website, but most of the work we did was with our mentor getting information. Thanks to him and a physical therapist , we got to understand better how the location of the injury affects what you can do.

What we are doing:


This upcoming week, we hope to set up our website in good fashion to accommodate for any changes we need to make by adding a new section or two.   We also plan to find out more of what is really happening to your shoulder not only when something tears, but also when it is fixed.


What we will do:


After this, we are going to begin wrapping up our website and finalizing everything, with the deadline coming up quickly. Our mentors will assist us by giving us some first-hand insight into the things we have questions about.

Price Jones, Wakefield Thurmond

2/9/17

What we did last week:

This past week we have been fairly busy. Price and I have continued building our website and consulting our mentors. We have gotten more information about the recovery process, but specifically what not to do when recovering. We learned that there are certain lifts and exercises that someone recovering from a shoulder injury should not do. A lot of these exercises are bad for you because they stress the back of your shoulder, such as bench press or military press.

 

What we are doing:

 

This week Price and I are learning more about the different throwing programs for people who are recovering. We are also focusing a lot of time developing that the website and making sure everything looks and works correctly.  

What we will be doing:

In the coming weeks, I (Wakefield) will be what it is like to be starting the throwing program while still doing physical therapy. I will also be asking our mentor, James Jones, what it is like for him when starting his throwing program. Price and I will also be refining the website and adding more sections to it to make sure it includes everything we will want to tell people about the process.

 

 

Weekly update 1/27

Baseball Arm Injuries

Price Jones, Wakefield Thurmond 

This week Wakefield and I were very busy. The website is coming along nicely! This week, Wakefield wrote about the recovery process of certain arm injuries, He talked about general circumstances as well as his particular injury which was six months. This may not seem like a long time to some but you have to look at the situation from a student athlete and a coach and future recruiters. Six months for a athlete is a whole season and part of your summer baseball season as well. The summer of sophomore year and on is crucial time for recruiting. Also, If you are injured in the off season, you loose precious time to develop and grow as a player. I also was able to meet with our mentor James Jones to see how his rehab was progressing. Well, that is all from us this week.  

Weekly Update 1/20/17

Price Jones and Wakefield Thurmond

Weekly Update

This week we continued to grind on the website ans long as some new topics of subject. Wakefield is continuing to make strides in the right direction on the website. Also, with baseball season around the corner, Wakefield and I have been able to speak with more baseball players and their perspective of how dangerous arm injuries are. We found that in today's time, most youth baseball players don't really recognize or acknowledge the true danger arm injuries are. Which only gives us more incentive to work on this project. I also sat down with my dad who is a PA and specializes in orthopedics. We talked about the likelihood of coming back from an energy like that and being as good as you were and 99% of the time the answer is that you wont be. Also, we watched a video of a tommy John surgery and went through the steps. Well thats all we have for you this week. Thanks for reading. 

 

Standing Out To Colleges

Price and Wakefield

Getting into a good college is something that goes through close to every high school students mind. And from a young age, you grow up loving a certain college team if you are like Wakefield and I. So here's the big question, how are you going to stand out. Their are very obvious answers to this question. For example, good grades and a excellent athletic ability are usually the only two people think of. But there are many other ways because not everyone is athletic enough to play college ball and not everyone has that 4.5 gpa with an ACT score of 28 and higher. So the question stands, how are you going to get into that dream school that's in your head right now? Genius hour and other student driven projects can take you from the "middle of the pack" of applicants to the top where you can catch the schools eye. Let's use Wakefield and I as an example. Imagine a college is looking at both of our resumes and our grades may be average in the eye of the particular school, but all of the sudden they see that we by ourselves made a website and started a movement no matter how small. It shows many good traits they want to see in students. Such as Charisma, dedication, and drive. Now all of the sudden we have a greater chance of being accepted.