Madison Yakaboski, one of the best young players in the West, suffered a torn ACL in her right knee during a district playoff game with her high-school team, Mount Si of Snoqualmie, Wash.
A 5-foot-9 guard in the 2009 class, Yakaboski sustained the injury while going for a rebound and landing awkwardly during her team's 54-51 victory over Bainbridge in a first-round, Sea-King 3A district playoff. She'd scored 15 points before the injury.
Madison Yakaboski |
Yakaboski does not yet have reconstructive surgery scheduled. Typically, surgery is scheduled after swelling and pain is reduced and some range of motion is regained.
Rehabilition from ACL surgery can last from 6-12 months, so there is a good chance that Yakaboski will return at the start of her junior season at Mount Si. Sarah Morton, a senior at Monroe who has signed with Washington, had reconstructive surgery at the end of February, 2006, and returned in time for this current season, though her playing time has been monitored.
Serious knee injuries have been at alarming proportions for girl's high-school basketball players, particularly as year-round play continues to be emphasized. One in 100 female high-school athletes will suffer a serious knee injury each year, according to a study by the NCAA. Because of factors such as physiology, muscle development and hormonal changes, women have an incidence of knee injuries four to eight times higher than men.
Yakaboski emerged as one of the top players in the state of Washington as a freshman, when she finished first in KingCo 3A in steals (5.3), second in assists (4.9) and scoring (14.5), fourth in rebounds (8.5) and fourth in blocks (1.5), earned first-team, all-league honors and was named to HoopGurlz.com's all-freshman team for Washington. She played last summer for West Coast Elite, one of the top club teams in the country. Yakaboski has averaged 15.0 points during her sophomore season.
A nimble guard with great length and sprinter's speed (she placed as a fresman in the Washington State 3A meet), Yakaboski can be extremely disruptive in passing lanes or on the ball on defense, where her athleticism and quickness also makes her an effective shot-blocker. Her lower-body strength and leverage also has made her a shooter with sometimes NBA distance from three-point range.
Yakaboski's older brother, Brandon, a record-breaking running back at Mount Si, has signed to play football at the University of Washington.
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Glenn Nelson is the publisher of HoopGurlz.com and the editor-in-chief of Scout Media (www.Scout.com), an online sports network and magazine-publishing company and subsidiary of Fox Interactive Media. Glenn also founded and
coached
the Dragons and Northwest HoopGurlz select girl's basketball teams. He previously was a longtime, national-award-winning basketball columnist and writer for The
Seattle
Times. His work also has appeared in several national magazines and books. He is co-author of "Rising Stars: The Ten Best Players in the NBA" (Rosen Publishing,
2002). He
can be reached at hoopgurlz@comcast.net.
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