Juanita's Floor Under Fire -- Synthetic Surface Blamed For Injuries, Will Be Studied

-- KIRKLAND

Jim McDonald wraps the tape once more around Ethan Wildenborg's right ankle, tears it away, then starts on the left ankle, while another Juanita High basketball player waits his turn.

"You know how to tape?" McDonald asks of the first nonplayer who walks by.

Juanita's first-year boys basketball coach doesn't expect an answer. He doesn't need much help either.

In his first few months coaching in Juanita's Fieldhouse - the school's multi-purpose sports facility - he's learned more than he wants to know about taping ankles. And more than he wants to know about synthetic basketball courts.

"A wood floor would be nice," he says.

He might get his wood floor if a group headed by Juanita parent Russ Hanson gets its way. The group is trying to persuade the Lake Washington School District to rip out the synthetic surface, which has been used at Juanita since the school opened more than 20 years ago, and replace it with a hard maple-wood floor.

At the urging of Hanson, who has two sons in the Juanita High basketball program, the district so far has agreed to spend $3,000 to hire a Dallas firm to put together a safety study on the floor, which is the only synthetic surface used for games in the KingCo Conference.

The Center for Sports Law and Risk Management of Dallas will conduct tests Friday to grade the traction and hardness of the floor, which players, coaches and trainers blame for many of the

stress injuries - shin splints, back strains, ankle sprains - suffered by the players.

The 33,184-square-foot fieldhouse, where the boys and girls basketball teams play their home games, is covered by a hard-rubber surface that lies atop asphalt.

It's called a polyurethane-poured floor by those who make it. And called the source of countless pains by many who play on it.

"Running down the court, it just wears and tears at you until you start aching," says Justin Browning, a 6-foot-4 junior who plays on Juanita's junior varsity team.

Says Wildenborg, a senior: "I've been having back problems ever since I started playing here. There's not as much give on that floor. You can feel it."

McDonald says he sees it in the number of injuries. Already this season, McDonald estimates nine players have suffered minor floor-related injuries. He shortens practices and has all but cut wind sprints from the practice routine because of it, he says.

Not all the head basketball coaches at Juanita have disliked the floor.

"We liked the surface very much," says Bob Anderson, Juanita's first head basketball coach. "The most important thing (to prevent injuries) is doggone conditioning and making sure that you stretch. You just don't go out there (without stretching) running up and down and jumping and yahoo-ing on your legs if you want to avoid injuries.

"We put a tremendous emphasis on conditioning and taking care of yourself with year-round activity. . . . I don't recall any more injuries of any kind on that surface than the hardwood surfaces in nine years at Sumner (his tenure as head coach at Sumner High) and four years at Puyallup (where he was an assistant)."

Anderson coached at Juanita from the school's inaugural season in 1971-72 through the 1983-84 season - when the team won the Class AAA state championship. His teams qualified for the state tournament in nine of his last 10 seasons there.

"I think the mental attitude is the most important part," Anderson says. "Look at all the greatest basketball players, the ones who end up in the NBA, and look at where they come from. They've been playing in the streets of the hotbeds of the country: Detroit, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. The inner-city kids are used to playing on the blacktop, the asphalt surface.

"From a mental aspect, you've got to feel good about playing - instead of thinking this is going to hurt me or that's going to hurt me. Kids have been playing on hard surfaces for years and years and years."

Hanson says Anderson makes a good point, but adds, "When Bob had that floor, there's no doubt in my mind it was in good condition."

Juanita's original synthetic floor was replaced by the current floor in 1985. And its safety hazard has become an all-too hard reality, says Hanson. "If it's true that joggers aren't supposed to run on concrete, then it's at least as hard as those poor guys on that floor," Hanson says.

The safety argument had been brought up by basketball coaches before McDonald arrived.

"It's always been a concern. I think it's been an ongoing concern of basketball," says Kathy Siddoway, Juanita's fifth-year principal. "But there haven't been complaints from other users."

Those users include the volleyball team in the fall, the wrestling and gymnastics teams in the winter and the baseball and softball teams who use the fieldhouse during rainy days in the spring. The facility also houses the graduation ceremonies of the three high schools in the district - Juanita, Redmond and Lake Washington - and a multitude of community sports events and other activities.

"We do just about anything in that fieldhouse," says Rom Castilleja, Juanita athletic director. "If in fact a wood floor is going to limit what we can do there, we have to look at that. It was designed as a fieldhouse, not as a specific basketball facility."

Says Siddoway: "I think we just need to wait to see what the result of the (district's) study is. Obviously, we want a safe floor for kids, that's for sure."

One estimate to remove the floor and install a maple floor - in the entire fieldhouse - was $210,000.

Doug Rank, Juanita's trainer, says he sees a correlation between the school's relatively large number of stress injuries and the hard surface.

"It seems like we see a greater-than-average amount of at least beginning-of-the-season conditions like shin splints and pateller tendinitis (tendinitis just below the knee)," Rank says. "It seems like every year, and I've been there six or seven years, through three different boys coaches and two or three girls coaches. So I can't say I can attribute it to type of practice."

Rank estimates that annually from the boys varsity-JV and girls varsity-JV teams combined, he sees "in a good year five and in a bad year 10" stress injuries.

By contrast, Sammamish trainer Jim Richards estimates he see about five stress injuries per season for all eight of the boys and girls basketball teams that use Sammamish's hardwood surfaces.

"In fact, the only problem we've had so far this year was a player who sprained his ankle playing in a game at Juanita," Richards says.

Hanson, whose younger son Tom was declared out for the season last week when a broken bone in the arch of his sore foot was discovered, has sought a change for the past two seasons.

"My big complaint is if you continually get people hurt there, you should do something about it," Hanson says.

JUANITA'S INJURED LIST -- Coaches, trainers and players in the Juanita High boys basketball program blame the school's hard - and sometimes slick - synthetic basketball playing surface for a relatively high number of stress injuries on the team. This season, the following players in the boys' program have lost playing or practice time with stress injuries:

Player

Yr. : Injury : Time lost -------------------------------------------------------------------. Justin Browning

Jr. : strained ligaments ankles, knees : 1 practice per week -------------------------------------------------------------------. Brian Doughty

Sr. : knee tendinitis : sits out some practice -------------------------------------------------------------------. Tom Evans

Sr. : broken middle finger-x : 4 weeks, incl. 4 games -------------------------------------------------------------------. Brian Eyster

Jr. : groin, knee, ankle pain : hasn't played-y -------------------------------------------------------------------. Tom Hanson

Jr. : broken bone in arch of foot : out for season-y -------------------------------------------------------------------. Matt Nielson

Jr. : strained ligament in ankle : 3 games -------------------------------------------------------------------. Greg Paribello

Jr. : knee tendinitis : limited 8 mins./game -------------------------------------------------------------------. Brian Towne

So. : swollen calf, poss. shin splints : limited to 1/2 practice -------------------------------------------------------------------. Ethan Wildenborg

Sr. : sprained ankles, back pain : 10 practices, 1 game -------------------------------------------------------------------.

x-Evans lost footing on slick surface, breaking finger when he landed on hand. y-currently sidelined.