Miranda Russell dislocated her pinkie during Arizona Wildcats gymnastics practice last week.
"Our trainer popped it back in," she said, "and I just finished up my assignment."
Russell, a junior one season removed from ACL surgery, saluted and went back to the uneven parallel bars.
"It's almost like a battle cry for us," coach Bill Ryden said. "'We'll figure it out. We'll find a way.'"
Ryden said last week that "maybe four" gymnasts felt 100 percent, even this early in the season. The Wildcats are 0-2 through two matches this year, losing a squeaker Sunday to No. 12 Stanford in a showing Ryden praised.
The Wildcats started the school year with 14 gymnasts. Since then, sophomore Jillian O'Neal and junior Kristen Schmieder quit the sport, a surprise to Ryden.
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Then sophomore Rebecca Cardenas suffered a torn ACL. Sophomore Katie Matusik had ankle surgery. Freshman Ellen Pitluck probably needs Tommy John surgery on her elbow. Of the above, only Matusik has any chance of performing this year, Ryden said.
"It's been a scramble," he said. "It was Plan B, real quick."
Sophomore Britnie Jones returned from a stress fracture Saturday to earn Pac-10 Special Performance of the Week. The Wildcats, however, had to send only five participants out for floor exercises at Arkansas -Â on fewer than the norm.
They didn't have enough healthy bodies.
"It's definitely disheartening when someone gets hurt," said senior Sarah Tomczyk, one of only three upperclassmen on the team.
"It puts a lot of pressure on the people that are healthy - that you have to be on your game all the time. If you're sick or you sprain an ankle, you're out there competing.
"At the same time, I feel like the group of girls that are able to compete are very motivated. It hasn't seemed to kill the effort."
Tomczyk knows the feeling.
She redshirted her freshman year after dislocating her elbow. It took more than a year for her to recover - when her elbow healed the first time, it wouldn't straighten all the way.
"I can sympathize with athletes going through very intense injuries," she said. "I encourage the girls who are hurt - 'It's OK. It's going to work out. You have to keep pushing through it.'"
Ryden calls the image of gymnastics as simply glitter and classical music "the greatest illusion."
They're tougher than that.
"They're like truck drivers in practice," he said.
The key, Ryden said, is to make young gymnasts "not feel the weight of the world on their shoulders" along the way.
The coach thinks the injuries will make his team better, eventually.
"I'm pretty sure," he said, "that we're going to be a different team in March."
