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“I couldn’t have recovered my abilities so quickly without Ephraim,” says Mollyann Pais, an 8th grader at Bel Air Middle School. Last spring, unbearable head and neck pain sent her to the hospital. An undiagnosed infection in her inner ear had created blood clots in her brain.

The clots increased the pressure in her brain and severely damaged her optic nerves, rendering her clinically blind with 20/800 vision in one eye. She spent sixty-three days in the hospital undergoing four surgeries, but she never gave up hope.

“The worst part was being in bed for two months,” she says. “I thought I’d be able to rejoin my lacrosse team as soon as I got out of the hospital,” but after two months in bed unable to eat, she’d lost weight, strength, and much of her muscle tone.

After three months of physical therapy, Mollyann began the Athelites’ lacrosse training program. “I couldn’t have recovered so much without Ephraim,” Mollyann says. “He’s great at motivating you. He critiques you, but he always makes you feel good about yourself as an athlete.”

The physical therapy helped her, but “working with Ephraim helped so much more.” Her before and after player ratings showed an improvement of over 30% in her left hand shot speed, a 40% improvement in her left hand scoop while running, and almost a 70% improvement in her sit-ups. Her initial player rating was 131.75, but at the end of the Athelites session, her rating had increased to 264.95, an increase of more than double her initial rating.

Even with all of these gains, the most important skill Mollyann acquired wasn’t measured with the Player Rating. “After my illness, even though my eyesight improved to 20/25, I still have blind spots, and my vision isn’t as good as it used to be. Ephraim helped me learn to compensate for those blind spots.”

Mollyann just qualified for MYLA, a lacrosse travel team, and her coaches have noticed her skills. “One of the coaches told me that she and the other coach have noticed how intense I am, how smart I’m playing, and how I not only don’t seem to have lost anything, but that I’m stronger and showing more skill than before I got sick,” she says.

Mollyann’s parents explain, “While the PT in the summer was essential, the training with Athelites was amazingly crucial to Mollyann’s success and confidence at tryouts and in practice. We truly credit her Athelites experience with building Molly up in every way, physically and mentally.”

Written By Terri Pilcher

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