Poitinger Family Story: Getting Back On the Soccer Field

The entire Poitinger family credits the Atrium Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy program with not only helping them get better, but also helping them reach and maintain their personal best.

Steve Poitinger, track coach at Lebanon High School and a Select soccer coach, first injured his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) as a college student in 1979 while playing basketball. He experienced another injury and by 1998 his ACL had deteriorated to the point that it needed repair. Steve turned to Atrium Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy services at the Lebanon location. After surgery Atrium physical therapists helped Steve regain full use of his leg.

A partnership between Atrium Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy and Countryside YMCA helped the Poitinger family on more than one occasion and with more than one family member.

In 2001, Steve was playing indoor soccer when he was hit and heard his other knee pop. He headed back to the Atrium team of therapists who had treated him in 1998. Three years later, his 15-year-old daughter, Marlee, who plays on her father’s Select soccer team, took a slide tackle that took her out of the game and landed her in the operating room with the same therapy team who treated her father.

Just as Marlee was wrapping up her first month of rehab, brother Rob called from the US Coast Guard Academy to say that he’d been playing soccer on the school team and had been hit and “heard a crunching sound” in his leg. Rob returned home during the holidays for surgery and rehabilitation. After only two weeks of three-times-a-week therapy, Rob Poitinger was impressed with his progress. “They did such a good job. There were two other kids from the Academy who had this surgery within five days of mine and I was back playing a month before them,” he says.

Just when the Poitingers thought they were finished with rehab, daughter Marlee took another tackle in a soccer game and arrived back at Atrium Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy. With rehabilitation, she was back out on the field in no time. And did we mention that brother Rob is waterskiing and parachuting with his renovated knee? The whole family credits the Atrium Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy program with not only helping them get better, but helping them reach and maintain their personal best.

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Our sports medicine team is ready to help you get back in the game. Call the location nearest you to learn more about sports medicine services in your area.