It’s been four years since Piper Kelly had her shoulder surgery at OrthoIndy. And now she’s about to climb onto the biggest stage in her career. As a globally ranked speed climber for Team USA, Piper had always had the Olympics in her sights. But multiple subluxations — or partial dislocations — in her shoulder was an injury she had to address first.
The first time the injury happened was during training two weeks before a competition in Switzerland. “It just popped out a little bit and went right back in on its own. I didn’t have to go to the hospital or anything, but that was sort of the first injury,” Piper explained. She spent the next few days before the competition going to multiple doctors, who did not think anything was torn, which prompted her to continue with the competition. It was not until the end of the first round – with two more subluxations – that she pulled out of the competition.
“Over the course of the next year, I think I had 13 shoulder dislocations,” Piper recalled. “I forget what the exact percentages are, but once you dislocate, you’re like 50% more likely to dislocate a second time and then that just increases every time. I put the surgery off for a long time. I was worried about returning to the elite level of competition I wanted to be.”
“I was told it was a year-long recovery. I’d been training for the 2024 Olympics, so I was really close to the time to have the surgery and still return it in time to train for that. I mean, I started climbing when I was super young and that was kind of my whole identity, so it was also scary to think about having that taken away. I didn’t really know what else I was going to do if I didn’t rock climb.”
In 2020, she decided to have the surgery, after the year of subluxations. “With all the competitions shutting down due to COVID-19, it seemed a convenient time to have surgery with a yearlong recovery process. Piper was recommended to OrthoIndy by the parent of a teammate and had the surgery in July 2020.
Dr. Troy Roberson, a sports medicine surgeon at OrthoIndy and the head team physician for the Indiana Pacers, performed the surgery. “The trick for a situation like Piper’s is to understand that part of what has allowed her to pursue and achieve her goals at the highest level is the positions she has been able to put her shoulder. Unfortunately, that can cross a line and turn in to problems. The goal in that case is to restore stability to reestablish trust in the shoulder – but not restrict motion so much that she can’t perform at the level she is accustomed to. It’s a delicate balance.”
After a successful shoulder surgery with Dr. Roberson, and with the collaboration of her physical therapy team at OrthoIndy and Cincinnati’s Beyond Exercise, Piper began clawing her way back to pre-injury form. “The surgery happened in the middle of COVID. School was closed. The gym was closed. So I was home in Indianapolis. and got the surgery done at OrthoIndy,” she said. “When schools opened back up, I was able to come back to my conditioning team in Cincinnati. They have been super helpful.”
Jeff Mestrich, an OrthoIndy physical therapist who worked with Kelly after surgery before she returned to Cincinnati noted, “Piper’s rehab was a true team approach. It required communication between the surgeon, me, and coordinating her rehab at a different location when she returned to school. In order to return, Piper needed an extensive, quality surgery followed by focused rehabilitation with the goal of giving her a shoulder that was better than prior to surgery.”
Her last appointment with OrthoIndy came 6 months after the surgery, and her range of motion on her shoulder was already back to functional mobility. “I was happy with that, and I was happy with the therapy and the doctors and everything. The tricky transition was going from everyday motions to climbing slowly to speed climbing at an elite level,” she recalled.
“It’s weird to have your range of motion reduced, but that’s what the surgery was for – to stop my shoulder going so far it would dislocate. If I got back to where I was, that would not be a good thing,” she joked. “But I honestly don’t notice it interfering with my competitions. Speed climbing is always on exactly the same wall, so I’m doing the exact same 15 moves every single time. So with that I know what I need to train for and what strength I need to have, what range of motion I need to have. ”
Since then, Piper has been competing above her pre-surgery level. “It’s pretty crazy to come full circle heading into the Paris Olympics. The surgery was 4 years ago, right around the time I was pursuing the Tokyo Games. It was so hard to trust the shoulder after the surgery. As a speed climber, recovery is tricky. You can’t climb slowly. You’ve got to be ready to 100% fully commit,” Piper said. “When you’re recovering from an injury, the natural instinct is to ease back in. So it was probably a year before I speed climbed again. But then I won the North American Cup in Philly — my first tournament back. Crazy.”
That first win in October 2021 was just the beginning of Piper’s climb back up the international rankings. She re-qualified for the US Olympic Team, and if anyone needed more proof that she was fully recovered, she set a PR in her gold-medal run in the Pan American Cup in the spring of 2024 to punch her ticket to Paris to represent Team USA at the 2024 Olympic Games this summer.
And her PRs keep coming — in tournaments and in training — most recently lowering her personal best time 3 times in the same session on June 21.
“It’s just been great to do what I love again. It felt so good to be back and then the (North American Cup) win was just the cherry on top. I was really pleased with how easy it was to get back that mental part of being in the zone, finding the flow and just have that first competition go well,” Piper said.
“Now, I’m just working on consistency. It’s the same pattern every time for a speed climber. You’ll notice little differences in how climbers approach their run. It’s a balance of doing your moves well, having the strength to do the riskier moves, so you don’t slip or have to reset. It’s 50 feet in 7 seconds. You can’t hesitate.”
As a speed climber, it looks like Piper Kelly is peaking at just the right time.
The Women’s Climbing competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics runs from August 5-7. You can catch Piper’s Olympic run on nbcolympics.com or streaming on Peacock.
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