Hayden Rebounds From Broken Leg
Stonewall Jackson Swimmer Aims for Titles, Scholarship

By Rich Campbell
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, February 17, 2006

Zach Hayden could bear the intense physical pain, but the despair was agonizing.

As he lay holding his deformed, broken leg last October, his spirit sank. The senior All-Met swimmer at Stonewall Jackson had trained fervently for his senior season, hoping his performances would help him earn a scholarship to a top Division I program. With just one step, though, his prospects were cast in doubt.

"I had all these goals . . . and then those all just went out the window immediately," Hayden said.

The broken leg, suffered four months ago, will prevent Hayden from defending his Virginia AAA 100-yard breaststroke and 200 individual medley titles at today's state championship meet in Fairfax (although he will swim the 50 and 100 freestyle). What the injury will do to his college chances is less certain -- most programs that were recruiting him in the fall backed off after the injury, but Hayden still has a chance to land a scholarship by the spring signing period, which begins April 12.

The injury happened on a recruiting visit, of all places. On Oct. 7, during a visit to the University of Texas, Hayden and some Texas swimmers were playing "six-square," a game in which players knock a ball back and forth at a fast pace. Hayden took what he called a "bad step" and snapped his left femur.

"Going to Texas and breaking my femur, like on a list of one to a million, it was probably 1 million out of the things I expected to do while I was there," said Hayden, a high school all-American.

He had surgery that night. A titanium rod was inserted in his leg and attached with four pins. Hayden was relieved that doctors did not fit him with a leg cast, sparing him a four-month hiatus from the pool. They also assured him a full -- but lengthy -- recovery.

For a senior seeking a scholarship, Hayden was injured at a terrible time. The NCAA's early signing period for swimmers began Nov. 9, and Hayden had not even resumed swimming at that point. He had to postpone recruiting trips to Michigan and Virginia.

College coaches said they would wait for the spring signing period, gaining a chance to gauge Hayden's recovery. Virginia offered Hayden a 33 percent scholarship, but he declined with hopes of returning to health and getting a better offer in the spring.

Pete Morgan, Hayden's coach at the Curl-Burke club, has guided more than 150 swimmers to Division I programs over 27 years. He said the college coaches' decision to wait on Hayden "made complete sense."

"I think all the coaches in this process that are recruiting Zach have an idea of the kind of guy that he's going to be regardless of this temporary setback," said Morgan, who said he has been in contact with the coaches at Texas, Michigan and Virginia. "And I think they view it all as a temporary setback, not something that's going to hold him back from reaching his potential."

A positive outcome didn't always seem likely, however. One of the doctors who met with Hayden shortly after the injury told him it would be a year before he could swim competitively. Then, in late November, Hayden suffered a setback.

He was swimming about every other day when he began to feel a painful pinch near his left kneecap while kicking in the water. It was caused by his weakened leg muscles, so he stopped swimming and concentrated on his physical therapy. It was around this time that Hayden told Stonewall Jackson Coach Chris Draper he worried about not being offered a scholarship by one of his top choices.

Hearing of Hayden's anxiety "broke my heart," Draper said.

NCAA regulations prohibit coaches from commenting publicly on potential recruits. Through a sports department spokesman, Virginia Coach Mark Bernardino declined to respond to general questions about recruiting an injured swimmer. Texas Coach Eddie Reese did not return a message.

Hayden resumed swimming regularly without pain in his knee around Christmas, and his outlook has improved as his recovery has progressed.

"It was sketchy at first," Hayden said, "but when it started to come around, it felt pretty good."

Hayden's training target has been the Junior National Championships club meet, scheduled for March 21-25. He hopes he will prove himself healthy and capable of swimming the times he swam before the injury. But because Hayden's leg has, until recently, been too weak to perform the specialized kick required for the breaststroke, he has shifted his focus to freestyle.

That change could ultimately improve Hayden's scholarship chances. Not only does he enter today's state meet a top contender for the 50 and 100 freestyle titles, he has proved his versatility.

"Whether he reaches that [pre-injury] level remains to be seen," Morgan said. "If I were to guess, he's going to be a real attractive spring sign. The coaches are going to have to go kind of on a mix of what they see and what they see as a promise of better things to come."