Coach Paul Buscemi’s assessment of Mary Mrdjenovic flashed through his mind as he put the Regina girls hockey team through their practice paces in mid-February.
This particular drill involved two players battling for the puck, then chasing each other down the rink.
Mary hustled at warp-speed in pursuit. “I was going as fast as I could,” she remembers. “I lost my edge.”
“She went into a helicopter spin,” Buscemi said. “She hit the net, then backwards into the boards. I knew immediately she was injured.”
“I was shocked,” Mary said. “I remember slipping. It all happened so fast. I was lying on the ice, looking at the ceiling.”
“She laid there probably two, three, four minutes,” Buscemi recalled. “We helped her up, she skated to the bench, laid down some more. Mary said her back was stiffening up and asked to be excused from the rest of the practice.”
That evening, with her back still hurting, Mary went to the emergency room of a local hospital. “They took X-rays, but didn’t see anything. They gave me some pills for pain and a muscle relaxant,” she said.
The next morning, “still really sore, just a bad kink in my back,” Mary stayed home from school, where she is a senior with a 4.0 GPA and a member the past two years of the National Honor Society.
An MRI two days later at a specialist’s office indicated “a definite compression.”
A week later, a CT scan “showed how bad the injury was,” Mary said. “Three vertebrae in my spine fractured.” Mary identified them: T(thoracic) vertebra 9, “broken way through.” T10 and T11, “small compression fractures.”
Mary had broken her back.
Nearly 10 days after the accident, on March 5, Mary had five-hour back surgery at Troy Beaumont. “It was a success,” doctors told me, “because my bones are strong.”
For the next two weeks, she remained at home “resting.” She surprised everyone by returning to school a week before Easter. She had expected to be out until after the holiday break. Mary is wearing a back brace for three months, then will undergo physical therapy.
During her recovery, in those quiet moments, “sometimes I questioned how and why it happened,” Mary said. “I was fine one day, out the next with a serious injury.”
She played hockey at Regina for four years and was in her second year in lacrosse, also coached by Buscemi. “She gets cuts and bruises,” he said, “but she always goes right back in there.”
She and her family, members of Macomb’s St. Isidore Parish, were comforted by the prayers and thoughts of friends and schoolmates. “I had a lot of cards and gifts,” Mary said. The edible arrangement from the Farmington Hills Mercy hockey team “was a great gift.”
Mercy had knocked Regina (8-15-2 record) out of the Michigan Metro Girls Hockey League final-four playoffs.
Mary will graduate May 23 from Regina and enter Kettering University in the fall for a degree in biochemistry.
She was one of the top three finalists for a scholarship from the Henrik Zetterberg Foundation. When word about Mary’s injury was brought to the attention of the Detroit Red Wings star, he decided to give her a special scholarship.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to help her out,” Zetterberg said, noting how Mary helps others through volunteer work at food banks, St. Vincent de Paul Society, a nursing home and parish fundraisers.
“She’s just a super, great kid,” said Regina athletic director Diane Laffey. “She is concerned about all of her teammates and always has been.”
“Life gives us challenges,” Mary summed up. “But they happen for a reason.”
Don Horkey is a freelance writer from Shelby Township.
