{"id":3577,"date":"2021-12-02T09:57:36","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T14:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2021-12-08T09:25:32","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T14:25:32","slug":"pepsnik-the-story-of-leader-to-sideline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/02\/pepsnik-the-story-of-leader-to-sideline\/","title":{"rendered":"Pepsnik: The Story of (Cheer)Leader to Sideline"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"by-jasmine-pacheco\"><em>By Jasmine Pacheco<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp; Sophia Pepsnik is a sophomore attending Ponte Vedra High School who started cheering as a young girl, and her interest in the sport grew even more since starting high school. Unfortunately, she recently endured an injury&nbsp;to her knee severely affecting her cheerleading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;Pepsnik&nbsp;is currently attending Zone Cheer, where she would&nbsp;normally&nbsp;work on her&nbsp;competitive abilities&nbsp;with her team. However, due to her injury,&nbsp;she is now&nbsp;rarely&nbsp;attending,&nbsp;and goes at most once a week only to sit and watch. Pepsnik is currently in the midst of the strenuous healing process, and is working towards gaining back strength and mobility in her knee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp; According to <em>Geisinger.org<\/em>, \u201cSince many organizations still don\u2019t consider cheerleading as a sport, it doesn\u2019t have to follow consistent safety regulations, which plays a role in the injury rate for cheerleaders. As a result, more than <strong>30,000 cheerleaders<\/strong> go to the hospital for cheerleading related injuries every year.\u201d This source shows how when compared to other sports, the overall number of injuries are low. However, cheerleading injuries are often much more severe, making up to<strong> 50-66 percent of catastrophic<\/strong> injuries in female athletes. Pepsnik suffered&nbsp;two&nbsp;large meniscus tears&nbsp;and a&nbsp;full tear on her&nbsp;ACL&nbsp;while training for cheer, which led to having surgery and constant bed rest until healed. This injury occurred while she was&nbsp;at practice and went for a straight right leg kick, when she heard a shift and pop sound in her knee.&nbsp;Pepsnik stated,&nbsp;\u201cThis injury hurt me a little since&nbsp;it\u2019s a sport I love, and not being able to do it&nbsp;definitely&nbsp;hurts my mentality especially seeing my team having to change the routine&nbsp;because I can&#8217;t be in it. This injury has shown&nbsp;me that anything can be taken away real fast so enjoy it while you can and don\u2019t take anything for granted.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote has-border-color has-lighter-blue-border-color has-very-light-gray-background-color has-background has-small-font-size\" style=\"border-radius:0px;font-style:italic;font-weight:200\"><blockquote><p>\u201cI hate that I&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;do the sport&nbsp;I&nbsp;love&#8221;<\/p><cite>&#8211; Pepsnik<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In sports, injuries are inevitable. Even when an athlete is in their best physical form and specifically trained to stay fit and active, a single errant step can bend joints and limbs in ways they are not meant to move. With the right recovery and plenty of mental toughness, an athlete can return to being better, faster, and stronger.&nbsp;Pepsnik then remarked, \u201cI hate that I&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;do the sport&nbsp;I&nbsp;love,&nbsp;and&nbsp;it doesn\u2019t really make me feel good knowing that I&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;help in any way&nbsp;physically,&nbsp;but it has given me some free time&nbsp;to focus on more things like&nbsp;school and&nbsp;overall makes me feel&nbsp;a little less&nbsp;stressed. I do wish this had never happened though.\u201d Even with the difficulties an injury may cause,&nbsp;Pepsnik is sure she can overcome any&nbsp;obstacle in her path towards recovery.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jasmine Pacheco &nbsp; Sophia Pepsnik is a sophomore attending Ponte Vedra High School who started cheering as a young girl, and her interest in the sport grew even more since starting high school. Unfortunately, she recently endured an injury&nbsp;to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/pepsnik-checrleader-1-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3612,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions\/3612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pvhstiburon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}