Kelsey Serwa, a Kelowna native and Canadian Olympian, will miss the remainder of the ski cross season after suffering a knee injury in training.
The 27-year-old miscalculated her speed going into a feature and overshot the jump, landing heavy and hard on a flatter part of the hill.
Serwa says she landed square and stable, but previous injuries to her knee caused the hard landing to do some damage.
“As soon as I landed it hurt a lot, so I knew that I at least had some bone bruising because I’ve had that before,” Serwa explained. “But it was different in the sense that it shot down my leg more so than in years past.”
She knew it was more of a bone issue than a ligament issue and was determined to keep training.
As Don Cherry would say, “She’s a good Canadian kid!”
At the end of the day, however, her knee locked up on her and the swelling was getting worse, so she decided to stop training and get an MRI done.
After the MRI confirmed the injury, Serwa flew back to Canada to go under the knife and even documented part of the process on Instagram.
“Basically it was a cartilage transplant,” said Serwa. “So the damaged area on my femur gets replaced with an awesome, healthy piece of bone with the thick slice of cartilage on it, but from an area of my knee that isn’t load bearing and not an impact zone.”
It’s called an OATS procedure, which stands for osteochondral autograft transfer system, and it’s a relatively new surgery to Canada.
“My surgeon was very excited to do it.”
With the surgery now out of the way, the long recovery process can begin for Serwa.
“I’m six weeks non-weight bearing and that’s just to let really solid bone formation heal within the femur there,” Serwa explained. “Then I’m six months no impact, so I’ll be able to walk, but I won’t be able to run and jump, stuff like that.”
Serwa says she’ll be returning to competition in December, but should be able to start training on the hill by the summer, during the ski cross off-season.
As for staying positive through a tough injury like this, the Olympian says it lets her focus on other aspects of her life.
“I’m going to school right now at UBC Okanagan as well as doing all the gym work I need to do and then some,” Serwa said. “I think when one door closes another one opens, as cliche as that sound, but this injury has given me an opportunity to continue my studies and work on getting my degree finished, which I’m pretty happy about too.”
If you want to keep tabs on Serwa’s road to recovery, she’s very active on social media and you can find her on Instagram and Twitter.
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