Big Girl vs Ankle Injury vs Head Coach

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Nin-Jia

Gymnast
There’s this one older girl on my team who has had a reoccurring ankle injury ever since she pulled 3 tendons in her ankle a couple months ago. She’s 16 and a sophomore in high school. She typically does fine at practices with minimal pain. She wears an ankle brace at each practice and makes it through the practice until we start tumbling on floor. A couple of nights ago she went for her first tumbling pass (round off bhs back tuck 1/2) and only did the round off and started hopping up and down on her good ankle because the pain was so bad. She took a break for a couple of minutes and then went for the same pass again. This time she finished the pass but her ankle was worse than ever. Later when we were doing full floor routines, she was the last person in our rotation before practice ended. She did her routine (minus the tumbling, just dance, leaps, and turns) This girl hit her ending pose of her routine (the pose is on the ground) and then literally just rolled over and stayed on that one part of the floor grabbing her ankle and rolling around because the pain was so bad. Eventually, all the rest of the girls on the team came over to the floor because practice was ending and we all had to stretch. This girl was still lying on the ground grabbing her ankle as we start to stretch. The HC glances over at her once and then says her name (let’s call her Lily.) The HC goes “Lily! Get off the floor and get your butt over here and stretch!” Now this girl Lily barely ever cried about anything. She’s been hurt multiple times before and hardly cried then. Now she’s crying hard and loud and all the little girls can see her. Normally she would be embarrassed in this kind of situation but now she wasn’t even trying to hide it. Lily says back to the HC “I can’t! My ankle is killing me!” The HC and her basically argued back and forth for a few more minutes and all the while Lily was still crying hysterically. Eventually HC won the argument and Lily went to stretch with us still crying. All the coach did was yell at her and then at the end of practice lecture her about how she expected more out of her and how all the little ones look up to her. The youngest girls in our workout session are probably about 8 years old. Lily was still crying and limped all the way to the locker room and HC didn’t do anything. Her injury wasn’t bad. Just her ankle having a bad day after the countless other injuries so she’s okay... but I’m wondering what I should do about it? Keep in mind that the HC absolutely loves this girl. She’s been on team since she was 5 and they have a very close relationship. It’s just now she’s all about the tough love... to the point where it’s barely love and this girl Lily has thought about seriously quitting the team and either a) doing the highschool team at school or b) quitting gym all together. And I don’t want her to do this. She has a lot of potential and I’m her friend and I absolutely love her to bits. But she’s not happy and I don’t know what to do. That is, without getting the coaches upset at me too. Or intervening with her personal life.

Any ideas??
 
It is tough being caught between two options that seem to be right. In my mind being a friend comes before being a coaches favorite. And trying to help someone does not necessarily mean making a decision for them sometimes the best thing a friend can do is support whatever decision they make. Really this decision is solely hers and the most you can offer her is your support as not just her team mate but her friend.
 

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