From setback to success

By: Julia Vellucci
Humber Athletics Communications

Marley Bonnick, who played basketball since she was six, modelling after her dad and brother, has been playing for the Humber women's basketball team for three years and experienced an ACL injury.

"I got surgery on January 23rd of this year. So all of September until January I was still in school, still supporting the team, still traveling with the team, still doing what I can if it's on the sidelines or shooting and then I had surgery and I was still back at school," Bonnick said.

"I was so used to being on the court and just sitting on the bench cheering, and not being able to help my team in tough games or close games, that was a mental challenge," Bonnick added.

"I knew my time was coming and not to dwell on it too much because there's physically nothing that I can do at the moment until I'm completely healthy. I would say it was a bit of a mental game, but I got over it quickly," she emphasized.

It takes a year for an ACL to heal without a knee brace and nine months with one. She has a brace and reached her nine-month mark on October 23. She was able to make her debut on October 30 without any restrictions.

Bonnick is motivated by her dad, who was a CCAA All-Canadian at George Brown College in 1989. She hopes to earn that distinction herself this year and win a national championship.

For aspiring young athletes overcoming injuries, she said, "You can't speed up the process. The process gets you to your best self or your healthiest self, whether two weeks or nine months. Like me, focusing on the process and the journey will help you regain your balance and get you in that mindset that I'm good where I am right now and when my time comes, I'll be even better."

Bonnick's teammate, Maezell Del Mundo, has been playing for the Hawks for four years, and this year is now her final year. However, she began her college basketball journey on the bench due to tearing her ACL a week before her training camp and before she was supposed to fly to Toronto.

"I've been playing for four years, but in my first year, I was going through an ACL injury, so I didn't actually get to play. I was a redshirt," Del Mundo said.

Coming to Humber Polytechnic from Vancouver and coming out of COVID made the transition difficult for her, and her ACL injury only added to that difficulty. She would not have been able to get through if it hadn't been for her family, teammates, and coaches.

Del Mundo had her ACL surgery at the end of November, with the basketball season beginning in October. She was blessed to have a speedy recovery with the Humber therapy clinic and was cleared to play around seven months post-surgery.

"I already knew that coming off of my surgery for my ACL, I would be out for the entire season. I tried to find ways where I could be a supportive team member by cheering, trying to be more encouraging and also being another set of eyes for my teammates and my coaches, which also helped me in the sense when I came back to play, I got to see the game of basketball in a different way," she said.

Del Mundo didn't know she tore her ACL until living here for a month as she was misdiagnosed by physicians back home but was told to get an MRI here and found out more about her knee.

"When I first found out that I tore it, it was almost like the end of the world for me because I was a little bit isolated at first with not having any family around me and finding out information on my own and living alone here," she said.

"But I feel like it was so motivating that I had such a great social system around me that I never felt like giving up. It was more like I'm gonna do this for the people who are supporting me because they believe in me so much and I've come this far to move from a different province and work hard to play at this level," Del Mundo continued.

"I never saw it in a way where I was ever discouraged or wanted to quit, but it definitely was very hard mentally at first to grasp everything and try to push myself because there are always hard times and good times during the recovery," she said.

Del Mundo's assistant coach, Aleena Domingo, played a huge role in her recovery. She had also suffered the same injury in the past. Since Del Mundo's family wasn't here in Toronto, Domingo took her in for a month when she was recovering from her ACL surgery.

After graduation, she plans to obtain a master's degree in physiotherapy and if an opportunity comes for her to play basketball while getting her master's, she won't hesitate on taking it.