When Jenna Powers tells people her tale, she seemingly turns into an alien.
“They kind of look at me,” she said, “like I have three eyes.”
Actually, Powers does not have an extra eye. But she does have one less elbow joint.
Suffering what her surgeon called a “life-changing injury,” Powers made sure the one thing that would not change was her ability to play softball. Beating the odds and playing with a left arm two inches shorter than the right, the Hopewell Valley Central High senior recently completed a stellar four-year playing career with the Bulldogs.
As a first baseman/pitcher, Jenna had a career average of .297 with six doubles, 40 RBI and 21 runs scored. She hit .361 as a sophomore and .302 as a senior but, in her case, statistics are secondary.
Just the fact she played meant she batted 1.000.
And when her family sat and watched her perform, it always felt like a gift.
“What people don’t know, especially the opposing team, is what she went through to get to where she’s at,” said her mom, Lynn. “I’m so proud, I didn’t know if this was ever gonna happen. She came through with a lot of grace. She really inspired a lot of people in our family and the people who were close to us during the whole thing.”
Bulldogs coach Gary Nucera initially heard about Powers from the mom of his former standout player, Nicole Apai, a neighbor of Jenna’s.
“Nicole’s mom said she needs that confidence to say I had this pretty terrible injury when I was younger and it’s not gonna hold me back,” Nucera said. “And it clearly never has. It’s probably one of the greatest decisions she ever made.”
The saga began early in Powers’ 7th-grade year at Timberlane, when she was making a TikTok video while skateboarding to a friend’s house. As her phone was extended in front of her while taking a selfie, a stick got caught under the wheel and Jenna was jettisoned forward. Her body landed in the street with her left arm extended, and her brother Nick quickly summoned Jenna’s parents at work.
“It was a freak accident,” Lynn said.
Powers’ parents rushed her to the hospital and the next day, manual manipulation surgery was performed to reattach the radial head — a joint that connects the radius to the elbow.
Powers then endured approximately 100 two-hour sessions of physical therapy. But after all that, Lynn said, “we couldn’t get her arm past 90 degrees. She lived at 90 degrees for about a year. She couldn’t wash her hair, put her hair up. She couldn’t do what girls had to do to get ready.”
With help from her family, Jenna was driven to school, dressed by her mom and taken to a salon in Pennington to get her hair washed so her shoulder-length cast would stay dry.
Physical therapist Nick Lowndes worked tirelessly, and Lynn said “he became like family to us, but there was too much scar tissue, and we could not get her out of 90 degrees.”
And then came “the worst day,” when doctors said that the surgery had failed and the radial joint snapped off the radius. Varsity softball, which Jenna wanted to do since she started softball at age 6, seemed out of the question.
Not to be deterred, she went to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where a second surgery was scheduled the summer heading into her eighth-grade year.
Two nights before the surgery, the stress caved in on Jenna and she began crying. After waking her mom for comfort, the two made a list of the pros and cons of the surgery. When the good outweighed the bad, she calmed down.
The Powers could not speak highly enough about CHOP surgeon Dr. Apurva Shah. But even he could not perform a miracle. As Lynn and husband Jim sat in the waiting room, he summoned them to the family room while Jenna was still under anesthesia.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry we cannot save it. We have to take the elbow joint out,’” Lynn said. “We had to sign a form to remove a body part. We looked him in the eye, very emotional, and said, “What would you do if this was your child?’ He said, ‘Take out the joint. If you try to put it on again, I’m afraid it’s gonna fail again.’ So they took out the radial head joint.”
What that meant is the radius now just connects from the wrist to a blunt end, which caused the arm to lose two inches of length and take on a slight bend. It also induces constant bone growth that is controlled with medication.
When she regained consciousness, Powers was hit with the news and took it as well as possible.
“It was very stressful,” she said. “I never thought it would be that bad. When they told me they had to remove a joint and the arm would never be the same, I was like, ‘OK, there’s nothing I can do now. I can either deal with it or mope around the rest of my life.’”
On the bright side, the procedure provided range of motion, and Jenna could start slowly training to return to softball.
“My surgeon said it was the best outcome that could have happened,” she said. “We got way more mobility than expected after the second operation. They had to remove it because it was so destroyed. They took a picture of the joint as I was under and it looked like raw meat. I was kind of shocked.
“But I was relieved it was going to be better. If not, I’d be stuck in the same spot at 90 degrees. That was terrible. I’d have shoulder pain from typing, I’d have to lift my elbow in the air just to get my wrist to touch the keyboard.”
With the joint removed, it was back to therapy, and Lowndes was not about to let Powers give up. He was an inspiration before and after her second surgery.
“There were days when I didn’t think I would play again or make it through my bump in the road,” she said. “It felt endless but he made it more manageable. Sometimes I wouldn’t want to go after school. He really took me on and didn’t give up. My mom sent him pictures of me playing softball. He was so happy for me.”
Returning to the diamond would not be easy. After the second surgery, Covid hit during Powers eighth-grade year and with everything shut down, she couldn’t do much to reacclimate to the game. When restrictions loosened up, Jim stepped in.
“My husband’s influence was very big in her being able to compensate and re-learn her swing,” Lynn said. “He found her a hitting and pitching coach to get her back into playing.”
Jim hired Pennsbury High assistant coach Dave Murphy as a hitting instructor. Murphy helped Powers regain her swing and she earned the starting third baseman job as an HVCHS freshman.
On April 21, 2021 she took the field for the first time since sixth grade and emotions swirled.
“I feel like the word to describe it is weird, but also rewarding,” Powers said. “To have a starting position felt really good and rewarding after everything I did to get to that point.”
With so much softball under her belt, the return after a two-year hiatus seemed somewhat normal.
“It felt pretty natural to me,” she said. “I hadn’t played a whole game since sixth grade, I was obviously a little nervous. I’m with a new team, new coaches, new teammates. As far as I remember I never felt a doubt. I never felt nervous that I would injure myself again. I played how I wanted to.”
One frustration is that with her glove arm slightly shorter, she missed a tag on a Hightstown base runner because she couldn’t extend the arm far enough.
“I knew if I had an extra few inches, she would have been out,” Powers said. “But my coaches are so understanding with that stuff.”
After freshman season, Jenna moved to her natural position of first base and also pitched 96 innings in her four seasons. Looking at her stats, the casual fan would feel it was an average career. But to those who know the back story, it was so much more as Powers had to fight through some dark days.
“I remember the worst, gut-wrenching feeling is when they said ‘This didn’t work, you need another surgery,’” she said. “That was the stuff I never wanted to hear. It just put me back to square one. There was a time it was never really positive. I dreaded going to those doctor’s appointments. Every couple nights it was crying time.
“But I am thankful I had that second surgery because if I didn’t, I feel like I wouldn’t be able to play or be where I am today. I don’t have pain in my arm anymore, which is the number one goal because if you’re in pain for the rest of your life, you’re gonna be grumpy.”
Powers, who will attend Rowan University and play club softball, takes a light-hearted approach. Still wearing a brace, she refers to her left arm as “my robot arm.”
It was a long, emotional ride, but one that was worth it.
“When she played her very first high school game, I’m sitting there thinking nobody knew at the time what she went through,” Lynn said. “And I thought ‘Oh my God I can’t believe this is happening.’”
Jenna believed it.
“I never had a doubt in my mind that I wasn’t going to play unless the doctor said I couldn’t,” she said. “It was always a goal of mine.”
Not only did Powers play, but she served as an inspiration to her teammates. This year she and fellow seniors Shelby Rossi and Izabella Cornish finished in a three-way tie in the vote for the Bulldogs Leadership Award, and Jenna was voted as the team’s Impact Player, awarded to the one who changes a game with key hits and RBIs.
Her impact came in inspirational ways as well. In the Bulldogs last home game, Powers was pitching and got hit by a line drive in the pelvis area.
“I went out and said ‘This is your last game, you tell me do I need to take you out,” Nucera said. “She had tears in her eyes and she said, ‘No I want to stay in.’ That’s kind of been the motto of her career. She’s open, she’s honest, she leads by example. She’s a humble kid. I loved having her in our program.”
It was a long, hard road to get there. In assessing the entire ordeal, Powers said “Just from falling off a skateboard I wouldn’t imagine all that. Things can change quickly.”
Thanks to a supportive family, a lot of courage and sheer determination, Powers made sure they didn’t change for the worse.
Senior Jenna Powers takes a cut for Hopewell Valley softball.,
