By Beverly Oden, About.com Guide
In a cluttered little office space in North Orange County, Stacy Sykora stands with her doctor and works through various exercises. She holds in her hand a clear plastic sheet with sets of two red and green circles on it. The two circles look exactly like Lifesavers candy and her doctor refers to them as such.
Her task is to bring the plastic sheet to the distance in which the two lifesavers seem to become three. The third one isn't actually there, it is a product of human depth perception. Nonetheless, the doctor asks her to concentrate on the non-existent third lifesaver, a strange mixture of red and green.
Like those paintings that look like splashes of color and become an image if you let your eyes glaze over to see it, you can't look directly at the third lifesaver or it will disappear. The doctor asks Stacy to stare at it until one of the letters comes toward her a bit. The non-existent lifesaver has the word "clear" written across it. The letter C begins to float toward her. The doctor seems pleased.
At this point in her recovery, things are not exactly clear for Sykora. Not yet anyway. What Stacy is training her eyes to do would be difficult even for a person who has not suffered a brain injury. She is working toward a type of control over her vision that she may not have had before the accident. It is all necessary though for her to make a complete comeback and return to her previous form.
Her biggest issue at the moment when it comes to the game of volleyball is the trouble she’s having in tracking the ball. Translation: She sees the serve leave the opponent's hand, but somewhere on its way across the net she loses sight of it. It reappears when it is right upon her, sometimes too late to control it well.
As a libero, or any position on the volleyball court for that matter, this is a very big deal. Liberos are called upon to have impeccable ball control, passing and digging the majority of the serves and attacks that travel toward them at high speed. That she is even out on the court just months after the accident is incredible. Over in Brazil, they actually call her “The Miracle.” Doctors said she wouldn't walk or talk again. Certainly playing volleyball at a high level was out of the question, they said.
But yet here she is in the ophthalmologist's office ready to prove everyone wrong. Again. She's done it so many times in her recovery to this point it is difficult to count her out. Though when you think about the odds of a person recovering quickly enough from such a serious injury in time to make an incredibly deep Olympic team in just a few months, the task seems impossible to most.
But not to Stacy.
She doesn't let herself dwell on what people tell her she can't do. She just does it. That's how she found herself walking and speaking in several languages not long after she awoke from her coma. That's how she managed to get back in the gym and passing balls just a few months after the April 12th bus crash. And that's how she plans to go about making the team for 2012, her third Olympics.
"I've always been able to accomplish everything I have ever set my mind to," Stacy says. "I want to get back to where I was so I think about how I got there in the first place. I worked my butt off. So that's what I have to do now."
That work includes practice, weights, video tape and now vision training. Each week she heads to her doctor's office and goes through the various exercises to expand her field of vision. At one point in the session, she is asked to walk on a balance beam while the doctor throws a bean bag at her from various places in the room. She must use her peripheral vision to catch it. Stacy also has exercises she must do at home. She does them religiously.
Progress is being made daily. On this particular day, Stacy is excited because in practice that morning she was able to see a serve and follow it all the way into her arms for the first time since her return to the gym. She didn't know if it would last, but she was encouraged that it had happened at all.
Her doctors say she has come a long way. She walks over to the chalkboard in the little office and illustrates where she started. She says that the doctors would ask her to stare straight at the board and trace with the chalk exactly how far out she could see with her peripheral vision. She says it started out dismally with only a small area of vision. Now she can see just about as far as her arms can reach. Progress.
The doctors can't predict how quickly Stacy's tracking problems will resolve themselves or if it can happen in time for the London Olympics. These types of brain injuries are difficult to judge and vary from person to person.
Stacy is undeterred. She just keeps moving forward and striving to make progress. If she makes the team she will be ecstatic. But she's not going to dwell on how difficult it will be, she just takes it one day at a time, one step forward at a time.
A few nights later, the women's team gathered at UCI for an intra-squad scrimmage. Stacy put on her game jersey for the first time since the accident. The pride and excitement was visible in her face and after the match, she gushed about how great it felt to don that jersey once again. It’s clear that she is cherishing every moment of the journey.
Whether or not Stacy can pull this off and make the Olympic team remains to be seen. This year's women's team has a depth we haven't seen in USA Volleyball in quite some time. Regardless of what the outcome is, Sykora is already an incredible success story and an inspiration to many. Don’t count her out. They don't call her "The Miracle" for nothing.
Beverly Oden