Sarah Henry had things all figured out when it came to her plans for the 2012 Olympics. Holding dual citizenship in the United States and Canada gave her the option to swim for either national team.

She'd made the decision to begin the process to swim for Canada come 2012 in London.

Now Henry is not your ordinary athlete with bigger-stage dreams. When you make the semifinals and finish 13th in the U.S. Olympic Trials as a 16-year-old, suddenly the next Olympic games become a more realistic option.

With that decision behind her, the next big item on the agenda of the West Johnston High School student was a college decision. Major scholarship offers were forthcoming. That kind of thing happens when you're one of only four six-star recruits in the nation from the class of 2010.

A different day of fun?

So when she ventured out of the pool for a different kind of training session with her Raleigh Swim Association Club teammates, things seemed to be in line. The activity of the day on Mother's Day weekend was ultimate Frisbee.

"It was something that would get us some exercise in a different way," Henry said. "Something fun to do."

The gang was having fun, then the Frisbee came Henry's way. It was a bit high.

"Somebody threw a pass to me and I had to jump up to get it," Henry recalled. "I came down at a bad angle. My body went one way and my leg went the other."

Henry heard an immediate pop in her leg as she came to rest on the ground. The pain soon followed.

"I just remember trying to be hopeful, telling myself maybe it was a sprain as they carried me off the field," Henry said.

This should have been the first sign to the fourth-ranked swimmer in the nation in the class of 2010. She, the one who usually falls on the pessimist side, was being optimistic.

"I just kept telling myself that, hopefully, it's just something little," Henry said. "I thought that I, of all people, wouldn't be the one to get hurt. Swimmers don't get hurt like this."

Then, as her teammates carried her off of the field, a coach tried to ease what he thought were her worries. "They've got good surgery these days," he said.

The surgery

Dr. Rick Alioto initially shared the same opinion Henry had when she walked into his office.

"One of the things we had to deal with was Sarah's high level of pain tolerance," Alioto said. "When she came in our office, I didn't think she had torn her ACL because you couldn't tell how bad she was injured by the way she was walking.

"She definitely doesn't feel pain like others do."

Tests revealed Henry had suffered what some in the knee business refer to as the trifecta. She'd torn her anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments and the meniscus as well.

Suddenly, the swimmer who had never been hurt, never suffered a setback on her way to prominence on the world stage, was facing a near year-long recovery.

"Our expectations now, in a medical view, for this type of injury is for a completely pre-injury level of function," Alioto said. "In the sports world, it's a return to the pre-injury level of function that you're after."

Alioto told Henry after her operation that she had a 95-percent chance of complete recovery. That left a 5-percent chance that the world-class speed in the pool wouldn't return.

That was the moment the extent of the injury finally sunk in for Henry. "I knew at that point that it could be weeks before I got back in the water then," she said. "I've never taken more than two or three days off."

But instead of allowing herself to start drowning in the pool of regret, Henry, with the help of her father, started planning out the best path to recovery.

"The reason we went ahead and had the surgery as quickly as possible is so that we would know more about the future," Brian Henry said. "Getting the operation as quickly as possible allowed us to be on a path to recovery."

The Henrys, in consultation with Alioto, also elected to go a step further with the operation.

"Sarah's an outstandingly conditioned and dedicated athlete, and that's so important in the recovery process," Alioto said. "With these surgeries, 50 percent of the ball game is how committed they are to the rehabilitation process.

"You can do a perfect surgery, but if the patient doesn't follow through with the rehab, you're not going to get the kind of results that are possible, even with high-level athletes."

In addition to repairing the knee ligaments, Dr. Alioto gave Henry a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection. A PRP injection is created by spinning the blood in a centrifuge, then isolating the PRP with growth factors and injecting it back into the affected area of the patient.

Alioto said that although it's not proven that PRP injections actually aid in the recovery process, it's in no way harmful.

The PRP injection therapy is credited with helping Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Hines Ward recover from a sprained MCL in between the AFC Championship game and Super Bowl XLIII.

The rehabilitation

Alioto also consulted with surgeons who have worked with swimmers to determine the best way to approach rehabbing a swimmer with Henry's type of injury.

"It's different because swimming is a non-weight-bearing sport," Alioto said. "And there's not the same kind of side-to-side movement in swimming that there is in other sports."

One of the things Alioto learned is the importance of limiting the amount of force on the knee during the recovery process. So Alioto and physical therapist Joe Fuccello were very specific in their plans to restrict Henry from jumping off of the starting blocks or pushing off of the wall.

The breaststroke, one of Henry's best events, was a problem as well. Because of the unique kick that's involved with the stroke and the stress it puts on the knees, she's just been cleared to use the stroke during competition -- eight months after the injury.

After the surgery, Henry began to eye her first step to recovery -- getting back in the pool. She vowed to get back in the pool as soon as her wounds healed.

Brian Henry, Sarah's father, and her brother, Andrew, also a swimmer at West along with Sarah's sister, Christina, built a brace, specifically for use in the pool, out of plastic food-container lids to keep her injured leg straight and a bit drier. They heated the lids on the stove to make them more flexible, then shaped them to fit Sarah's knee. It was just another family activity spawned by swimming.

Brian and Lanette Henry's three children spent their early childhood swimming in lakes in Canada, and it became "the" sport for the kids soon thereafter. The family moved to North Carolina (Lanette is a Wilkesboro native.) when Sarah was 8.

Two weeks after the surgery, Sarah would walk up to the edge of the pool on crutches, get in and do one-legged workouts.

Since any contact to the knee could be trouble, she swam alone, making sure no outside forces compromised the rebuilt knee.

"Sarah's very driven in everything she does," Brian Henry said. "This became just one more challenge that's there for her, something else she can pride herself on achieving."

Fuccello, of Capstone Physical Therapy, constructed a physical-therapy approach that worked on range of motion and getting the leg straight at first, then slowly added weight-bearing activities to aid in the recovery.

The therapy sessions came early for Henry --at 7 a.m. But they fit in with the sometimes odd schedule of high school swimmers, many of whom practice before the school day starts.

Henry learned to take pride in the little steps of progress. Being able to kick again with the leg, being able to jump off of the starting blocks, being able to turn and push off of the pool wall.

Getting back on track

Fortunately, by the time major colleges started showing up with scholarship offers for Henry, she'd made enough progress in her recovery for it to become obvious that she was still going to be a world-class swimmer. (She already carries a world ranking.)

"They could see by October that I'd progressed and I'd still be someone they'd want to come to their school," Henry said.

She made the call to accept the scholarship offer from Texas A&M and signed in early November.

It was at that time that the knee-injury journey was starting to end for Henry.

"Sarah isn't always a patient person," Nanette Henry said of the injury and recovery process. "Through this, she's had to learn to be an incredibly patient person.

"It's reinforced our belief that Sarah will get through anything."

By December, Henry was back competing in a few meets.

This spring, Henry will have surgery to remove the screws holding the repaired ligaments in place. The screws are being partially blamed for a minor hamstring issue she's battling now.

Henry will be among those competing in the Greater Neuse River 4-A Conference Championships Thursday (Jan. 21) at the Smithfield Recreation and Aquatics Center. The meet will begin the trio of major events on the area high school swimming calendar. As the defending state champion in the 500-yard freestyle, Henry will be a major player at the upcoming regionals (set for Feb. 6) and the state 4-A championships (Feb. 11), when Henry will try to add to her string of state meet medals. She also won the 100 butterfly state crown in 2007.

As her knee has continued to heal, Henry's given in to the urge to compare her times in events: where she was before the injury and where she is now.

"For me, it's hard not to imagine racing against the clock," Henry said. "That's all I've ever done. But I'd say all of my strokes are better than they were before now. My breaststroking his just starting to build up since I haven't been able to do that much yet."

She will concentrate on the 500 free, 200 free and 200 medley in the high school meets.

Then comes her biggest meet of the first half of this year -- the Austin (Texas) Grand Prix, the one she's been eyeing since before she jumped while trying to catch a Frisbee.

"It [the injury] helped my thought process," Henry said. "It just made me focus more on the bigger picture. I've been focused too much on the right now for the most part in my life.

"I know that the biggest goal I have now is being ready for [the Olympics in] 2012 and 2016. Some things that are blank at this point, things that I don't know will happen like this injury, and I'll just have to work through it."