Following accident, Summit girl anxious to return to school, soccer

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August 16, 2010

By Dominick DiRienzo MEADVILLE TRIBUNE The Meadville Tribune Mon Aug 16, 2010, 07:30 AM EDT

MEADVILLE — In the moments after a boat propeller crushed and gashed part of her size-12 foot, Sarah Bratek was thinking about how much soccer she would miss this summer.

The 15-year-old Summit Township girl thought she had broken her ankle, but when she got in the boat and saw her foot hanging limp she realized things were more dire.

Bratek was swimming near her friend’s boat in Kinzua Reservoir on July 3 when she saw the tube her friend was sitting in being pulled toward the boat’s propeller. Bratek pushed her friend to safety and as she did that her foot was hit by the propeller.

“It felt like I broke my ankle. I saw blood in the water, but wasn’t really sure what had happened,” Sarah said. “I was numb from the shock, so it didn’t really hurt that bad.”

She climbed out of the water and into the boat and got a look at her foot “dangling by the skin.”

With a tourniquet on her foot to control the bleeding and the pain bearable, Bratek’s mind turned to her first love — soccer.

“All I was thinking about was soccer,” said Sarah, who has played youth soccer since she was 4 and has focused on goalkeeper since she was 11.

Crawford County Youth Soccer Association’s season had just started and she was wondering how much of that season she would miss.

She was flown by helicopter from near Warren to an Erie hospital, which she let her friends and family know about with a Facebook post.

Later, when Sarah met her mother, Taunya, at the hospital, Taunya said she remembers Sarah telling her “It’s not my hands. I can still catch a soccer ball.”

Once she was at the hospital, she had three surgeries in four days, including an amputation of the front part of her right foot. And she had to set a new list of new goals, which are listed out on colorful notes across her desktop in her bedroom, which had to be moved downstairs. Those goals include getting back to school at Linesville High in October and playing spring travel soccer.

“I’m trying to stay positive,” Sarah said. “This has introduced me to a lot of new people and brought me closer to my friends and family.”

One of her new friends is 1991 Meadville Area Senior High School graduate and world-class athlete Amy Palmiero-Winters, who is a below-the-knee amputee.

“She’s been like a guardian angel,” Sarah’s mother said.

One of the visiting nurses working with Sarah is a friend of Palmiero-Winters. The nurse passed on the details of Sarah’s accident and Palmiero-Winters came for a visit shortly after winning the ESPN award for best female athlete with a disability. She brought her prosthetic leg she wore to the ESPYs award ceremony with the red high-heeled shoe still attached.

“I went through a lot of what she went through and a lot of what she is going to go through,” Palmiero-Winters, 37, said. “We talked about it and she felt better. It’s nice to meet someone else who has gone through similar things. It’s a neat friendship that has been created. It’s definitely unique.”

Sarah said Palmiero-Winters has helped her get through the nights.

The nights can be long, lonely and painful and sometimes she will send a text message to Palmiero-Winters at 2 or 3 in the morning and get a response.

Other times she will send a text message to her mother, whose bedroom is upstairs, and Taunya will come and lie down with her daughter, sharing her headphones and listening to her daughter’s music with her.

“The night-time is hard. The pain can be bad because she doesn’t have anything else to think about,” Taunya, 38, said. “That is our bonding time.”

Sarah has her eyes on some other bonding time. She wants to get back to school by October (doctors have told her she has to stay off her foot until the wound on her foot, which took nearly 30 deep stitches to close, is healed). That’s a goal, along with her return to the soccer field, that Palmiero-Winters believes is realistic.

“Being in sports, that gives her a sense of confidence,” Palmiero-Winters said. “(When) I met her, I saw the determination, drive and desire to get back up and continue on.”

Palmiero-Winters is not the only who has noticed her drive.

“She is a hard worker,” Conneaut Valley girls soccer coach Brian Kebort said. “There was never a problem with her work ethic.”

As a freshman, Bratek played goalie for Conneaut Valley (students from Conneaut Lake, Linesville and Conneaut Valley high schools all play under Valley’s banner for soccer). By the end of the season, Bratek had played in a few varsity contests. She originally volunteered for the position of goaltender when no one else did.

“I like diving for (the ball), jumping for it, knocking everybody over to get to it,” she said.

The plan is to have Sarah see the physician that fitted Palmiero-Winters with special prosthetics that allow her to run marathons and other ultra-distance races.

“This affects her whole life,” Taunya said. “Her attitude has been the best thing. I think sometimes she has handled this whole thing better than I have.”

Dominick DiRienzo can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at ddirienzo@meadvilletribune.com.

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Following accident, Summit girl anxious to return to school, soccer

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