As the Olympic Trials approach for diving, Kassidy Cook of The Woodlands is still recovering from a shoulder injury.
Even with the pain in her shoulder, Cook and Sarah Bacon paired together to help Team USA secure a quota spot in the women’s 3-meter synchronized diving event at the FINA Diving World Cup earlier in May.
Though she’s still injured, Cook is practicing and preparing. KPRC 2 caught up with the local Olympic hopeful on Sunday. The diver, who finished 13th in the women’s 3-meter springboard at the 2016 Olympics, described her injury as tiny tears in the rotator cuff and labrum, but that her biggest problem is with a borderline stress fracture on her acromion, which is a shoulder bone in the back.
“It’s a very rare, unusual injury because a lot of people don’t get stress fractures there because (most people don’t put) a lot of stress on that area a lot,” Cook told KPRC 2. “And so it’s just kind of irritating every time I land in the water or swing my arm really fast.”
Cook leaves for the Olympic Trials on June 2 as she readies for the preliminaries and beyond on June 6 in the synchronized diving event with Bacon.
“I’m really excited to go to the Olympic Trials, which start in one week,” she said. “And I’m just kind of trying to keep my shoulder healthy, cutting back on repetitions and making sure that I’m feeling my best when I get there.”
And so coming up this next week, Cook hopes to find a way to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, regardless of the pain she may be feeling.