Racing ahead: Driven teen mountain biker stays on track with help from sports medicine doctor

While a lot of kids her age were still figuring out how to ride a bike without training wheels, Alice Hoskins started racing mountain bikes.

A senior at Miller School of Albemarle, Alice, 18, of Charlottesville, Va., now competes around the globe in mountain bike races and aspires to go professional one day.

“I love being able to be outside and explore places,” Alice explains. “My bike has opened up a lot of opportunities to do that, and it also allows me to do it in a super fun way.

Rocky roads

But racing, like most sports, doesn’t come without injuries. A standard mountain bike race is 60 to 80 minutes. To prepare, Alice trains from 10 to 20 hour per week.

Thankfully, Alice has been able to lean on Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital sports medicine physician and surgeon Matthew Panzarella, MD, to help her get back on the road.

Most recently, Alice broke her elbow after falling on heavily rocky trail, known as a “rock garden” in racing. She was competing in an international race in Puerto Rico with a premier youth team called the Gravity Collective.

“I was going through a rock garden toward the end of the race,” remembers Alice. “I got offline, and I ended up going over a weird rock and falling. I put my hand out to catch myself. Right away, I knew something was wrong.”

A determined athlete, Alice ran her bike a little under a mile to the finish line. She headed to the emergency room with her dad, Joe Hoskins, also a cyclist. After five hours of waiting, they gave up and called Dr. Panzarella, who is the team physician for USA Cycling elite mountain biking team.

They found a drug store and bought a sling, as Dr. Panzarella advised. When Alice flew back home, she got an X-ray and Dr. Panzarella diagnosed her broken elbow.

“It’s frustrating to have a setback when you can’t continue your regular training, but it’s mountain biking. You need to prepare for that to happen,” Alice says.

Supporting school athletes

In addition to his role as the team doctor for the national mountain biking team, Dr. Panzarella is a team physician for several high schools, including the Miller School where Alice attends. Dr. Panzarella has played multiple sports, including Alpine skiing and crew while an undergrad at Cornell University. So, he understands athletes’ drive to get back on the field, court or bike.

“I would say that 99 percent of my younger athletes I have to hold back,” says Dr. Panzarella. “People in their 20s or 30s who have a torn ACL or ruptured Achilles tendon, for example, may decide to stop playing their sport. But high school athletes are incredibly resilient.”

Crossing paths

Dr. Panzarella, who also races mountain bikes, met Alice’s dad, Joe, through the racing world. Alice’s mom also rides, and her two older sisters competed when they were younger. Joe started a girls mountain biking team in Charlottesville to help his daughters get started with the sport.

A few years ago, Alice became Dr. Panzarella’s patient when she broke her hand from a snowboarding accident. Knowing that Alice wanted to continue training, Dr. Panzarella had Alice grip a bar to simulate a bike handlebar as he created the cast. The finished cast allowed her to grasp the handlebar of her stationary bike so she could keep up her skills as much as possible.

“We are grateful that Dr. Panzarella was able to come with this creative solution,” Joe says. “He has a great bedside manner. He’s calm, and we know he strives to get athletes healthy and back to their sports as soon as it’s safe to do so.”

Back on track

Although Alice trains year-round, the racing season gears up in February and continues in through the spring and summer. Now that her elbow is healed, she can get back to full throttle.

Alice has seen the world through racing – Andora, Czechia, Austria and across the US. She will head to college in the fall. While she won’t compete on a college team, Alice will continue to train and participate in races while in college.