The Comeback Kid
Wheeler Jesse Schmidt keeps hopes alive
Quad City Steamwheeler Jesse Schmidt is tearing up the turf at the iwireless Center this summer thanks to a careersaving surgery that could put him in the running for the NFL.
“They said I was just a phone call away from the pros,” recalls ‘Wheeler Receiver Schmidt, referring to his tryout for the Green Bay Packers two years ago. The tryout had gone extremely well, with Jesse putting up better numbers and results than many of the Packers’ actual draft picks, including running the 40-yard dash in under 4.4 seconds.
Dashed dreams
He’d hoped to close the deal by showing the Packers and the rest of professional football the kind of stuff he brings onto the field. Then, three weeks into the Quad City Steamwheelers’ 2007 season, Jesse was running during a kickoff play and felt something pop in his knee. “It was like no pain I’ve ever felt before,” Jesse says. Once he was taken off the field and onto the sidelines, the team trainer and physicians twisted and bent his leg this way and that to test for injury. “They didn’t make a diagnosis right there, but I saw the look in their eyes and knew that they didn’t have good news for me,” he recalls.
Jesse says the pain, as bad as it was, wasn’t the worst part. His family came down from the stands to where the trainer was working on his knee. Jesse recalls the scene: “I couldn’t talk to my family because I was too broken up.” Seeming a bit reluctant to remember that devastating moment, Jesse concedes that seeing his professional football dreams apparently disintegrate there on the sidelines was hard. “My heart dropped for a little bit… you know, I got a bit teary-eyed.”
New hope with a new tendon
Then he met Dr. Tuvi Mendel of Orthopaedic Specialists. “A torn ACL can be a career-ender,” says Dr. Mendel. “Any time you tear your ACL, your performance may not return to the same level,” he adds. But Dr. Mendel saw that Jesse was young and highly motivated to make at least a full recovery. After discussing the options for repairing his torn ACL (one of the knee’s four major ligaments), Jesse and Dr. Mendel chose to use a new technique that replaces the torn ligament with a bigger, stronger hamstring from a tendon bank. Another option was to remove tissue from Jesse’s left kneecap and use it in his right. But the recovery with donated tissue was not only faster; it didn’t require rehabbing two legs. “Even though I could tell he was terribly worried about his recovery, Jesse was a terrific patient,” recalls Dr. Mendel. “He was committed to putting in the rehab work, and motivation is the key to gaining results in the rehab program.”
The surgery itself was no problem. “Right when I met with Dr. Mendel, I knew he was a good guy,” says Jesse, and his experience bore out that impression. A friend who’d had a similar surgery wound up with a 6-7” scar. “But I just have three little dots on my knee with a two inch scar where he did the surgery.”
A better way to repair a torn ACL
Dr. Mendel employs a newer minimally invasive technique that uses hamstring tendons in ACL reconstruction that does not involve damaging the kneecap and its tendon, like the old technique does. It also involves a smaller incision, off to the side, so there are fewer complications. “In women especially, the old procedure causes knee and joint pain years later,” adds Dr. Mendel, who has performed more than 200 hamstring-ACL reconstructions.
Jesse credits the surgery as a career saver. After the procedure came the physical therapy. Jesse’s sister had torn her ACL in high school, and her comeback to athletic competition set a strong example for him. “For a while it was tough out there,” he recalls. “Dr. Mendel’s staff kept my head up, and that really helped a lot.” He worked so hard at his physical therapy that the therapist told him to stop coming so often, for fear he’d develop tendonitis.
But Jesse was committed to working out and coming back even better than before the injury. He joined the Acceleration program, and says he has never worked his legs so hard before. He’s so committed to the program and its results that he plans on staying with Acceleration through the season. Before the injury, Jesse ran the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds or just under. Because of all the hard work he has put in, he’s even faster today, he says.
So fast, in fact, that mid-way through the season, Schmidt is now a leading receiver in the af2 League. That is not the kind of production even the most ardent fan would expect from a player whose career looked to be over last season.
He continues to prove himself to reach the NFL. “That’s the goal,” he says. “That’s the final stop.” But to get there, he’ll have to keep putting up the big numbers. And with his restored knee and confidence, that may happen quickly – perhaps even under 4.4 seconds.
