Thursday, September 02, 1999

Keck's recovery almost reality

---

UC star set to return a year after injury

BY MIKE DeCOURCY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Tinker Keck wears a knee brace. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

        The tests confirmed what Cincinnati team surgeon Angelo Colosimo already knew, but refused to say aloud, at least until the tests said it first. According to an MRI exam, Tinker Keck had torn his anterior cruciate ligament. For a young man planning to make a living in football, this spelled serious trouble.

        Keck had just been carried from the fourth game of UC's 1998 season, still damp with the sweat earned in trying fruitlessly to prevent another defeat. He wouldn't be playing for a while. But he did not weep. He did not ask why he'd been afflicted with this injury. He did not conjure images of his career's conclusion.

        Instead, he looked toward the start of the healing process. That meant reconstructive surgery on his right knee.

INFOGRAPHIC

Keck's surgeries

        “He just said, "When do we do it, Doc?'” said Colosimo. “Tinker is probably the most compliant individual I've ever treated.”

        When Keck returns to play strong safety for the Bearcats in Saturday's 7 p.m. season opener against Kent, he will be returning less than a year after suffering one of the most debilitating injuries any athlete can endure.

        It could have been worse. Advances in surgical techniques and rehabilitation practices in the past decade have made ACL injuries less traumatic and rarely career- threatening.

        “If this injury happened five years ago,” Colosimo said, “he probably wouldn't have played again.

        “Now, Tinker is going to play in the NFL. Will his knee be the way God created it? No, it won't, but we make it so he can go back and play. We've come light years from where we were even five years ago.”

        Keck was one of the NCAA's best punt returners in 1997 and was ranked as one of NFL draft analyst Mel Kiper's top secondary prospects entering last season. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds and owned a share of the NCAA record for punt return

        touchdowns in a season with four.

        He was attempting a routine tackle in UC's game against Indiana last Sept. 26 when he planted his right leg and, in Colosimo's words, “Boom!” With that, Keck earned a spot on Colosimo's operating table.

        “I was fortunate,” Keck said. “There are people that have had worse knee injuries than this. With technology today, they can overcome problems like that.”

        The surgery performed last autumn scarcely resembled what might have been done on Keck's knee even a few years back.

        • The reconstructive surgery that calls for using a piece of patellar tendon to form a new ACL can be done entirely through an arthroscope. The large incision so traumatic to the knee is no longer necessary.

        • Keck had torn cartilage a surgeon would have removed in prior years. Instead, using new surgical fasteners orthopedic surgeons call “arrows,” Colosimo was able to repair the torn meniscus.

        • Rather than seal Keck's knee in a cast or brace, Colosimo had him begin aggressive therapy almost immediately.

        “I'm sure he went through pure hell to get back to where he is,” said UC coach Rick Minter. “That's what it takes sometimes.

        “What he needs to do is just like that fighter pilot. He's got to get back up. He's got to get back in the ring ... to go play a game, have it hit a time or two, fall on the ground and get back up and say, "Know what? I'm OK.'”

        In 90 minutes, Keck had a new knee. That's all the time the surgery took.

        Colosimo wanted to not only repair the torn ligament, but also save the cartilage to prevent degenerative arthritis in later years.

        “For the average surgeon, it's much quicker and much easier to go in and just take out the meniscus and move on,” Colosimo said. “When you save the meniscus, you're protecting the knee because the menisci are little pillows, shock absorbers, and they also help in stabilizing the knee.”

        It is possible, even preferable, to repair the cartilage using sutures, but that requires larger incisions. It is less complicated to use the surgical arrows, which are inserted like darts through meniscus tears.

        “It makes the repair quicker and easier,” Colosimo said.

        There was nothing uncommon about the ligament reconstruction. Colosimo used the established technique of removing a length of the patellar tendon with a piece of bone attached at each end, then screwing it into place where the ACL once had been.

        After the surgery, Keck had a lot of work to do. Rehabilitation of a reconstructed knee is no longer done cautiously, with an instant assumption that a return to competition is at least a year removed.

        Working with UC trainer Pat Graman, Keck was soon doing aquatherapy and grinding through the painful process of regaining range of motion. His sessions lasted two hours a day for more than two months. While it proceeded, Keck had to deal with the question of entering the NFL draft or staying in school and firmly establishing he hadn't declined.

        Keck is an exercise physiology major, “so he had some interesting questions to ask,” Graman said. “A lot about the future, the health of his knee, risks. Should he go early? Where would he be in the course of his rehab when he had to be tested by the teams?

        “It's hard work, but he showed up on time every day, gave 110 percent every day. He was great to work with. You wish you had 100 like him.”

        It could have been worse in a lot of ways. For one, the Bearcats could have been winning football games instead of stumbling toward a 2-9 season.

        “It was pretty depressing to not be able to go out and play,” Keck said. “It probably would have been more depressing if we'd had a better season, because with success, you always want to be a part of that.”

        He was healthy enough following his surgery and rehab to participate in spring practice, but was held out of contact drills because there wasn't much for him to prove to coaches.

        But he has to prove to himself that his knee is what it used to be, what it needs to be.

        Keck went through the Bearcats preseason camp without incident. The knee “has its good days and bad days. Depends on if it's raining or not.”

        He has not been timed in the 40, but when he's in a scrimmage he feels like he closes on the ball as rapidly and keeps pace with receivers as he did before.

        Minter said Keck developed some minor ailments in other areas, such as his hamstring, by favoring his knee at times. Colosimo said any athlete who goes through an ACL tear — “It's something you don't forget” — must go through running and cutting to convince himself the knee is stable.

        “Wanting to make a cut, you kind of hold back a little bit because you're afraid something might happen,” Keck said. “Every day I break a little bit of that down and become more confident.”

       

---

Bearcats Stories

Keck's recovery almost reality

BRAVES 8, REDS 7
Box, runs
REDS NOTEBOOK
For 22 umps, it's 'Yer out!'
Mets 9, Astros 5
Dunn turns down Bengals' 2-year offer
Sargent fighting to play
BENGALS NOTEBOOK
Stretch run has begun
Will Reds play now, trade later?
Alabama touts Alexander for Heisman Tide high on Alexander
Xavier beats UC in volleyball opener
OHIO HIGH SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS
Ohio high school results
N.KY. HIGH SCHOOL HIGHLIGHTS
N.KY. HIGH SCHOOL RESULTS
High school football schedule