Last August, Sabienne Brutus tore her anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL, during a track workout. Her athletic career as a thrower could have ended then, had she chosen to have the surgery that would have taken long months to recover from. Instead, she chose to go through intensive therapy so that she could continue to compete.
It worked - at least well enough to earn her an All-American title with a weight throw of 56 feet 1 ? inches at the Indoor Track & Field National Championships.
Brutus came to Tufts as a sprinter, an event that she ran her freshman year winter. As the season went on, however, she didn't feel as though her trajectory was where she wanted it to be, and she began to look at another option.
I wasn't getting better. I was hurt. My two choices were to either quit track or to try something new, and I didn't want to quit athletics," Brutus said. "There were these two girls who were throwers - we don't have a lot of throwers because there's still sort of a taboo about it. When you think thrower, you think big and fat and all these things, and that's why a lot of people don't get into it, even if they're good. Girls with the stigmas of society don't really want to lift heavy, because they're afraid they're going to look like men."
Luckily for Tufts, this stereotype didn't hold her back.
"So these two girls, they were always doing well, and so I was like, 'You know what, I think I can throw this ball,' and from then on, I studied throwing. It wasn't always easy, but I stuck to it. You fall, you get back up," Brutus said.
Throwing successfully requires control, she added.
"If you're strong and you think that you can just force it out, you're going to fall. So you have to be patient. It's a sport that requires you to be angry and calm at the same time," she said. "At the time you start, you have to be collected
