Swimmer Overcomes Knee Injury

"I was drydocked." That's the way the puts it. The navy brat, turned high school All American, turned Harvard swimming captain seems to have a cheerful way of saying everything. But, then, one must remember, Maureen Gildea has reason to be happy. She is near the end of a long, hard road back to health.

"It happened tow weeks before, Olympic trials in the summer of 1980. I was jogging. I stopped off a curb and into a pothole. My knee were one way and I went the other," Gildea remembers.

It was no ordinary summer jogger felled that day, but a national-caliber swimmer. Nor was this any ordinary jogger's injury.

Gildea was referred to Dr. Arthur Boland, Harvard's head surgeon for athletics, who reconstructed her knee by inserting a staple to repair torn tissue. Despite intense pain, Gilder worked out three times a week her sophomore year to get back into the water.

Money in the Bank

"I see it like this. Before you can write a check, you have to put money in the Bank. So I put in my hours at the pool," she says.

Her swimming and extensive physical therapy brought her all the way back to the 1980 Ivy League Championships. There she qualified for Easterns, but luck was against her. At the Eastern, she reinjured her knee doing a flip-turn but still managed to finish her race and qualify for the National Championships.

"I had a choice to make. I could swim Nationals and risk injuring my knee severely, or I could come back slowly," Gildea says.

She opted against swimming in the Nationals and underwent exploratory surgery around Christmas of 1980, when Boland found that her kneecap had been badly worn away. Since then, Maureen has not competed, a superb athlete sidelined by a hole in the road.

Maureen has lived her whole life in and around the water. She led the nomadic life of a naval officer's child and says. "I come from a swimming family, and when I was found, I was toted to all of my [two] brothers' meets so I naturally started splashing around myself."

Serious Splashing

Gildea's swimming became progressively more serious, and by her junior year she had grabbed All-American honors and made the California state finals in the 200-yd. and 500-yd. freestyle events.

The next year--after yet mother move--Maureen qualified for the National AAU Championships in the swimmer's equivalent of a mile the 1650-yd. freestyle event In 1979, she finished ninth in the country with a lifetime best of 16:30, and won the district, regional, and Virginia state championships.

Not surprisingly, Maureen was recruited heavily by many powerful swimming schools. But after a talk with then-women's coach Stephanie Walsh, she decided on Harvard.

And those involved with Harvard women's swimming were glad she did when Maureen qualified for Easterns and Nationals as a freshman.

But all that was before the treacherous pothole pulled Maureen from the water the summer between her freshman and sophomore years. Despite the injury, she was elected captain of the team in recognition of her talent for leadership.

"Sometimes it's really hard to have to stand on the side with my cane and yell and scream, I sometimes think if I could get out there. I might be able to help the team," Gildea says.

Maureen's physical therapy takes several hours every day, which the combines with a little swimming.

"She works really hard. Sometimes she came to practice and got in the water when I'm not sure she was supposed to," says teammate Debbie Zimic.

Maureen has always worked hard, Frank Lloyd, her last high school coach, recalls than when Maureen broke her leg, doctors "fitted her with a waterproof cast, and she trained with it. By the time they look it off, she had built up so much strength in her leg that she dropped her time by 20 seconds," he says.

The hard work has finally paid off for Maureen Gildea. Coach Vicki Hays expects her to swim in the league championships next weekend. It's been a long, hard road back. But Maureen Gildea is no stranger to hard work, nor is she a stranger to long roads. When the Navy brat weighs anchor at the Ivies next weekend with a working knee, she can claim to have won her greatest victory of all.