Terren and Koda. Sistahs.

Terren came home seriously limping from gymnastics one day. Based on the limp and how Terren talked about it, mom suspected it was broken but hoping it wasn’t. Soccer season, all that Terren had been waiting for, was just around the corner. After Terren landed her foot between two mats upon dismounting the beam, her coaches had her sit out, but she insisted that she could finish the last 30 minutes of practice. To prove it, she climbed back up on the beam and dismounted again with a split jump. Her coaches reluctantly let her finish practice - on the bars mostly. Terren chose to practice her favorite toe circles, which is basically going all around the bar with your feet and hands on the bar. Mom asked her incredulously how she managed that with the current limp. She said, “I just put the sole of my foot on the bar.” Mom followed up, “But you had to land in the foam pit??” Terren said, “I just made sure to land on her back with her foot in the air.” Awesome solution. 

The next morning, the purple swelling around her toe telegraphed what the Xray a few hours later would show: her toe was broken. 

So her two geeky engineering parents set off on a multiple-hour discussion, debate, and investigation about how to protect her toe so she could return to soccer asap. They settled on using a hard heat-molded plastic. After an Amazon next-day delivery and a few late-night prototypes, Terren had a custom hard mold that fit around the bottom of her soccer cleat, protecting the pinky toe side of her foot. 

1 week after the injury, she was back swimming with buddy tape, doing gymnastics in a boot, and a few days later she was back on the field playing with her Mavericks team using her custom “orthotic". Below is another example of her commitment.