'Another obstacle'
For years, Julia Hart felt the pain snaking down her right arm.
She shrugged it off.
Aches just went with being a two-sport star, Hart figured.
“My shoulder hurt all through high school,” said Hart, a Slippery Rock graduate who just finished her freshman year at Geneva College. “I never knew what was wrong. I just knew it hurt bad.”
Hart chalked it up to playing both softball and soccer at a high level.
She just figured it was normal.
It was far from it.
As it turns out, Hart has a SLAP tear — a torn piece of cartilage in the inner portion of her shoulder joint. It's also known as a labrum tear.She was scheduled to undergo surgery Friday and will miss six months.That will wipe out her soccer season at Geneva. But she will be back for the softball season next spring.It won't be until her junior year when Hart will be able to fullfil her dream: play both soccer as a goalie and softball at the college level in the same season.“Just another obstacle to overcome,” Hart said.“I thought I was going to be able to play both sports (this year) and then I ended up only playing soccer,” she added.Soccer was moved to the spring because of COVID-19, but Hart was planning to also participate in softball.But another injury made that impossible.“I ended up getting shin splits so bad,” Hart said. “So, I wasn't allowed to do softball. I wasn't even allowed to practice for soccer. I just played in the games.”Injuries are nothing new to Hart.She began her freshman year at Slippery Rock with cast on her arm. During her sophomore year, she broke a finger playing goalie. Midway through her junior year she had a serious bone bruise on her knee and she began her senior year with another cast, this one on her thumb.As it turns out, there was a reason why she had such bad luck.It wasn't bad luck at all.Hart was diagnosed with Celiac disease, an immune condition in which people cannot process gluten.One of the side effects of Celiac disease is brittle bones.The signs were actually there from a young age.“When I was in fourth grade, I tripped over someone's leg in the hallway and broke my wrist,” Hart said. “We were like, 'How does this keep happening?' The doctors were like, 'Well, you're just active.'“When I got diagnosed with Celiac disease when I was a sophomore in high school, it all made sense,” Hart added. “There's nothing that can be done about it.”The shoulder tear?“That was just bad luck,” Hart said.Hart did get a full season — such as it was — for the Geneva soccer team this spring.She played all nine games and recorded two shutouts and 86 saves for the Golden Tornadoes.She was named Presidents' Athletic Conference Women's Soccer Rookie of the Week in April.Geneva was ravaged by injuries this season and entered some games with just two reserves.That made life in goal hectic for Hart.“I was pretty busy,” Hart said.She was also the only goalie on the roster.“It was a ton of pressure,” Hart said. “It was exciting, though.”Hart is studying sports management and hopes to be an athletic director some day.She hasn't ruled out coaching, either.“I just love sports,” Hart said. “I love watching them and I'm very detail-oriented. So being an athletic director seems like a perfect job for me.”
