UNDAUNTED ATHLETE
Roxby recovers from surgery
In its most misshapen state, the sweep of its arc and bend was unmistakable.
Doctors at B.C. Children’s Hospital had punched up the backlights, illuminating the X-ray image of a spine whose trajectory, by the tender age of 15, had completely lost its course.
“It looked like an S,” says Megan Roxby, a blue-chip, high school middle-distance runner who peered back at the black-and-white image of herself that day in late January, wondering if her heart was indeed beating faster than her feet had ever carried her.
“It was like an S that was really curvy at the top.”
That S spelled out her diagnosis of scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that doctors calculated, in Roxby’s case, to be 51 per cent.
There are only ever a handful of days impactful enough that they remain with us for the rest of our lives, and for the West Vancouver secondary 10th grader, this was one of them. Surgery was scheduled because the end goal of a normal, healthy life topped the list.
But what of her athletic passion? Would she ever be the same?
Cindy O’Krane stood near the finish line at the opening event of the four-race North Shore high school cross-country running season on Sept. 28, anxiously training her eyes on the area, which her stopwatch told her, would soon reveal the lead runners in their final sprint to the finish line at Ambleside Park.
Having trained Roxby and a number of others in that race through the Hershey Harriers club team, O’Krane had got to know the willowy teenager as a focused, determined athlete.
Yet it wasn’t even seven months since the surgery and Roxby had missed the entire outdoor track season the prior spring due to the rigours of her recuperation.
“But then I saw her come out of the opening,” recalls O’Krane, overcome with emotion in recounting Roxby’s winning moment. “I had to turn away because she had done it. Rather than talking about being a B.C. champ or an Olympian, she needed to take these tiny few steps and give herself a huge pat on the back. It’s a race I hope she remembers for the rest of her life.”
As it turns out, it was just the start of an amazing comeback.
Roxby went on to win the next race, Oct. 6 at Rice Lake, and after finishing second in Sechelt on Oct. 12, she closed out the series as the overall champion by winning on Oct. 20 at Loutet Park.
On Wednesday, the roll continued when Roxby won the senior (Grades 11-12) division at the North Shore championship meet.
On Saturday, she will compete in the youth division of the B.C. championships at Nanaimo’s Beban Park. If she can manage a topfour finish, she will represent her province at the national championships.