WNBL champion Sara Blicavs knew something was wrong with her body. The 188-centimetre basketballer was losing mobility. Much smaller point guards were starting to push her out of the key, and off the court she was unable to pick up her three-year-old nephew. She ploughed on, desperate to attend the 2024 Paris Olympics with the Opals after getting a taste as an emergency substitute on the bronze medal-winning team in Tokyo.
The source of her pain was bilateral spinal fractures – cracks coming from both directions that met in the middle of her vertebra. The fractures caused movement that eroded the spinal disc away and left bone scraping on bone.
Spinal fusions surgery has helped return Sara Blicavs to the basketball court. Credit: Victorian Institute of Sport
It meant she gave up her Paris dream and underwent a spinal fusion. After more than a year’s rehabilitation, she returns for the Opals on Wednesday night against New Zealand in Adelaide.
The 32-year-old said she had been so focused on the Olympics, she had blocked out the pain. Doctors later discovered she had also been playing basketball on a fracture in her tibia for months.
“You do end up kind of throwing your pain in the back of your head, and I was managing because I just wasn’t thinking about it. You choose to completely switch off that part of your brain, and ignore any sign,” she said in an interview with the Victorian Institute of Sport.
“I had a broken leg as well as a broken back.”
The injuries took a toll. She had pins and needles down her right leg for half an hour after one game, and in a separate incident was bedridden for days after her back seized when trying to get up off the ground while sunbathing.
“All the pain just flushed back in,” she said. “I couldn’t stand up … I was fearful of sneezing at that point. I couldn’t bend forward to pick a basketball up.”
The FIBA World Cup medallist now says that the full spinal fusion and disc replacement last year was the best decision she’s ever made.
She said her “cocky bastard” of a surgeon assured her the prospects of competing again were good, but she was nervous about the invasive surgery which had a 3 to 4 per cent chance of permanently impairing her mobility.
“You just never know what to expect. You’re getting a certain vertebra fused so you can’t move that vertebra any more at all. It’s completely stuck in place, so it is scary,” she said.
Following the successful operation, Blicavs couldn’t bend or twist for three months, and could only sit or stand for half an hour at a time. She moved back in with her mum for a few weeks, who had to help her lift anything more than five kilograms.
“It was a lot of laying down,” Blicavs said. “I got really good at crossword puzzles and Sudokus.”
She got a scholarship with the Victorian Institute of Sport, where she was taught to run and move again in ways that wouldn’t overextend her back. When the VIS athlete progressed to being able to do high knees, she thought it was the best moment of her life.
Sara Blicavs will be back on court for the Opals this week.Credit: Getty Images
Blicavs said a personal VIS team gave her the opportunity to develop as an individual athlete for the first time.
“It was a really cool time to actually step away from training and playing with the team and just focusing on yourself individually and building your game up individually. I feel like I’ve actually improved a lot from where I was – not just with my body but even my skill level, too. It’s just given me so much passion for the future,” she said.
“I feel like a tennis player where I’ve got my own little entourage, and bring my physio, bring my strength coach, here’s my running coach.”
She returned to the court for the first time in March for the Melbourne Tigers, almost a year to the day of her surgery, in a nostalgic return after playing juniors at the club.
As she makes her comeback in Wednesday’s trans-Tasman series match, Blicavs takes nothing for granted.
“Just to be able to put the green and gold on again and be back in that team, I’ll never take that for granted,” she said. “I know I’m super lucky to even get the call-up.”
Blicavs said winning bronze in Tokyo had been an achievement, but she wasn’t done with the Olympics. Los Angeles in 2028 was now in her sights.
“I would love to be [in LA], but at the same time, I think what’s happened with my back has just made me realise that basketball’s just fun again.”
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