Shoulder Check

  LU ANNE DINGLASAN Justin Williams still
plays club ice hockey for UCLA, despite dislocating his left
shoulder twice in a game last season.

By Vytas Mazeika
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

When Justin Williams talks about the injury, there’s a
disclaimer that tends to come first.

He asks how much you want to hear and how many details he should
give. After all, it’s not entirely PG-rated when the UCLA ice
hockey winger talks about the time he dislocated his left arm twice
in the same game.

It happened against Oregon in the second game of the 2000-2001
season. He was chasing a guy from behind and was tripped up
fighting for the puck. Williams’ left elbow slid out and he
felt a grinding motion. That’s when he stood up and felt the
shoulder pop back in.

The arm felt numb for a while and Williams didn’t really
know what had happened. After a few minutes he was once again able
to move the arm above his head and everything felt fine.

Another shift or so later, Williams made a poor hockey decision
and tried to take on four skaters by himself, starting with a
“big one” whose lateral movement he had underestimated.
The “big one” hit him a little distance from the boards
and when Williams hit the wall he noticed that the same thing
happened again. Only this time, it was much worse.

Williams couldn’t roll his shoulder high over his head nor
sit it down completely either. He doesn’t remember how he put
the entire weight of his body on the dislocated left arm when he
jumped back on to the bench. That fact was pointed out to him while
watching his father’s videotape of the events.

This time the pain wouldn’t go away while he sat on the
bench. The shoulder wouldn’t come back to its natural spot.
When play stopped, Williams went back to the locker room with the
trainer. She took off his shoulder pads and revealed two huge
bulges ““ one in front, where the shoulder had dislocated, and
the other in the back, where he was he was suffering constant
muscle spasms.

That’s when it really started to hurt.

On the way to the emergency room, while they stopped for gas,
his father’s car overheated. It was a good hour wait before
they reached the ER. The ice on the shoulder had already melted and
Williams remembers how much relief he felt when the shoulder was
popped back in. The pain was still there, but nowhere near the same
degree.

“There wasn’t too many minutes where I wasn’t
thinking about pain,” Williams said.

To add insult to injury, Williams came down with tonsillitis
immediately after the shoulder separation. It all happened in early
October and not until Halloween did he start feeling better
again.

This is certainly not the way this hockey player from Arizona
envisioned it.

A roller hockey junkie until his father surprised him with ice
skates on his 18th birthday, Williams decided to give the ice a
shot and made a discovery.

“I found my sport,” Williams said.

Though he made the team his freshman year, Williams dressed for
only four games and didn’t receive much ice time in those
limited opportunities. He just didn’t have the skating skills
and needed to improve to a level where he could help the team.

Williams dedicated the summer of 2000 to weightlifting and
hockey. A “chronically skinny kid,” Williams added five
pounds of muscle during the offseason. He came into training camp
an underdog and came out as a third-line winger. He even scored on
his first shot of the season ““ a shorthanded goal at
that.

But then came the injury.

“He was really destroyed by it,” said third year
chemical engineering student John Henao, his friend and workout
partner. “He had worked really hard for hockey, and he was
letdown by the accident. But he’s been training so hard since
(the injury) with aggression.”

At the time of the injury, everyone attests that Williams was
playing the best hockey of his short career at UCLA. But it was all
that hustle and hard work that might be to blame for the shoulder
injury.

“He went in like one-on-four and tried to carry the puck
in by himself, and he learned the hard way that you can’t
really do that,” left winger Dave Cokely said. “But he
has a good heart about it. He’s been working to come back for
awhile.”

There was controversy about whether to have the surgery or stick
to rehab. Williams’ injury was particularly destructive and
multiple doctors said that chances of dislocating the shoulder
again without surgery were near 80 percent. With those odds,
Williams decided to forfeit the entire season and go under the
knife around last Thanksgiving.

He now describes his new left side as an “armored”
shoulder. A screw was inserted at the possible expense of
flexibility to strengthen the joints. Doctors now say that
he’s more likely to injure the healthy right shoulder than
his left.

Three months after surgery Williams was able to get back on the
ice. Another month later he was finally allowed to play.

“I was definitely counting down the days until that four
months that I could get back on the ice and go all out,”
Williams said.

Now he’s back to that hustle and work.

“I know I’m not the most talented player out there,
but there’s no reason I shouldn’t be the
hardest-working,” Williams said.

His first game back was last Thursday’s season opener
against San Jose State. Cokely noted that Williams was probably at
around 90 percent of his old self, and it’s just a matter of
time before the old Williams returns. Assistant coach Mike Siegel
agreed.

“He’s not quite the player he was at the beginning
of last year, since he did have a whole year off,” Siegel
said. “But I’m expecting after a month or two, after he
gets into a good rhythm, he’ll definitely come back and
become the player he was last season.”

He was medically cleared to play in an actual game only a couple
of weeks before the SJSU game. For weeks on end Williams
wouldn’t stop talking about the game. Everyone he knew was
certain to hear about it.

“I had been mentioning it for a long time and had it
marked down ever since I got hurt,” Williams said.
“Coming back on the ice and practicing was one step, but
getting back to where I was and everything I had lost was a big
thing.”

The most emotional moments came before the game started. It was
while he was suiting up in the locker room and during the walk onto
the ice.

Williams’ posse was there in the stands on Thursday. The
loudest four included Henao and girlfriend Emily Guglielmo, a
third-year civil engineering student.

After the game, the group complained a little about his lack of
appreciation during the game, but Williams had an excuse. He was
focused on playing for the first time in nearly a year.

In the 8-1 loss to SJSU, the score was irrelevant to this posse.
They were happy enough just watching their friend back on the
ice.

“It’s a Justin crowd right now,” Henao said.
“We’re here for other hockey players too, but mostly
Justin.”

The shoulder pain is finally gone. Williams’ hockey career
has popped back into place.