Schweitzer glad to be healthy

December 11, 1999
The News & Observer

By Ned Barnett; Staff Writer

Georgia Schweitzer, the often injured Duke guard, is finally playing without pain, and the results are making the whole team feel good.

In the past two weeks, Schweitzer has won consecutive honors as the ACC player of the week and set career highs for points.

Schweitzer's hot hand has been an important part of Duke's surprisingly strong opening run. Most expected a slower start than 7-1 from a team that lost much of its offense to graduation.

Now there are stirrings that the 18th-ranked Blue Devils may have enough talent to return to the national championship game they lost at the end of last year's Cinderella season.

Only Schweitzer and others who went to the Final Four in San Jose, Calif., believed they could come back and win this season.

"People said to me: 'Georgia, how could you set your goal so high?' and I would say, 'How could you expect us to get so close to winning one and come back and say, "Oh, we're not going to be that good" and just lie down to die?'

"We were so close last year it's like, OK, the next step is to win."

Duke has everything going in the right direction as long as Schweitzer doesn't get hurt. And that, Duke knows, can happen.

Since arriving in Durham from Columbus, Ohio, three years ago, the 6-foot junior has torn cartilage in her left knee, undergone an emergency appendectomy just before the 1998 NCAA Tournament, broken a rib against Notre Dame last year and had major surgery on her right shoulder in April. The surgery repaired a joint so loose her shoulder would pop out when she threw an overhead pass or opened a heavy door.

Injury does not find Schweitzer because she is frail. It hits her because she is tough. Most of her injuries resulted from diving after balls. And being hurt doesn't mean she's out. She played in last year's Final Four games despite being unable to lift her right arm above her shoulder. "I just want to play," she said. "It makes the pain go away when I play."

Coach Gail Goestenkors said the team doctor told her that any other athlete at Duke - male or female - would not be able to play with the shoulder pain Schweitzer endured.

"She's the toughest I've ever seen," Goestenkors said.

Schweitzer credits her deep pain threshold to two older brothers. As a second-grader, she joined them for a pickup football game and broke her collarbone. She tells it this way:

"One brother said to me, 'You can't go tell mom or you're never playing with us again.' He was pulling on my arm and telling me, 'It's not broken. You're fine, you're fine.' I didn't keep playing, but I sat out there thinking, 'I can't go in and tell my mom.' When I walked in the house, my mom - she's a nurse - said, 'Oh my gosh, Georgia! This is broken.' "

On the other side of Schweitzer's toughness is a sensitive kid. When she arrived at Duke, she was deeply homesick for her younger sister, her brothers, her father, George - the source of her name - and especially her mother, Helen. "She was the most homesick player I ever had on the team," said Goestenkors, who is now in her eighth year as coach. "It was tears every day."

Schweitzer long ago lost her homesickness. Now she wants to spend another four years studying after she graduates from Duke. The patient who has spent so much time being tended by doctors wants to be one herself. "I want to be the person who can say: 'I can help you,' " she said. "I really want to help people."

Schweitzer stayed on campus this summer to complete a course in organic chemistry and is taking another pre-med course, physics, this year. In her free time, she goes on rounds with a Duke doctor who specializes in the treatment of brain tumors.

Schweitzer's experience at the medical center has changed her view of what happens in athletics centers. Although still intensely competitive, she now sees that there are things more important in life than basketball.

Before a game, Schweitzer used to prepare herself by focusing on the players she would guard and what she had to accomplish. Now she spends the time calming herself, reminding herself that the game is supposed to be fun. Relaxing seems to sharpen her aim. In the past three games, she has shot 60 percent.

During the Virginia Tech game at Blacksburg on Wednesday, the large, loud crowd didn't bother the newly serene Schweitzer as she scored a career-high 27 points. "Two or three years ago, I would have seen me losing it, but I was calm as could be and just having fun," she said. "Sometimes I would get the team in a huddle and we would just laugh."

Schweitzer's medical degree is still in the future, but she is already practicing her hoped-for vocation on the court. She delivers big shots with joy and makes a whole team feel better. The once-wincing player is gone. Now she's Dr. Feelgood.

Schweitzer glad to be healthy

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Schweitzer glad to be healthy

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