Several years ago Jenn Towne’s father built a soccer goal for their backyard. The Bangor High senior, who is a starter for the girls soccer team, wants to play soccer in college.

So when Towne landed in the hospital in August, she was justifiably upset. All she wanted was to play out her career for the Rams.

And to make matters worse, doctors at Eastern Maine Medical Center didn’t know what to make of the extreme pain Towne was feeling in her side.

But since those 10 days she spent at EMMC, Towne has recovered enough to be one of the Rams’ leaders on the field.

Towne is mostly pain-free and recently went to a doctor, who gave her another all-clear. She didn’t miss any games, and has helped the Rams to an 8-3-2 record.

Looking back, however, she was scared.

“In my mind I thought I was going to get better,” Towne said recently. “But inside I was like, you’re so sick, are you actually going to get to play this year. It’s my senior year and I want to play soccer in college. So it’s a really important year.”

It all started during a summer soccer camp at Husson College. Towne left the camp early one day because she was feeling bad stomach cramps. A computerized axial tomography (CAT) scan found a kidney stone and the doctors sent her home with pain medication. But her pain wasn’t alleviated, so she returned to the hospital, where she stayed for 11/2 weeks.

Towne’s doctors operated to remove the kidney stone, but they couldn’t find it when she was in surgery. The doctors put a tube in her back to drain fluid from a blockage in her kidney.

“Everything was building up and nothing was getting through my kidney because it sort of stopped working,” she said.

The pain gradually went away and Towne was released from the hospital, but she had missed soccer try-outs and was out of shape.

“At first I could only play for 7-8 minutes and I would get really tired,” she said. “But I’ve been working hard and trying to get back in shape to get back to where I was last year. I’ve been running, playing on my own in my backyard with my own net.”

Carey recovering from injury

Despite a bad collision in a recent game that left her with an air bubble in her lung and some broken ribs, Old Town goalie Whitney Carey has returned in time to help the Indians in their playoff drive.

Carey made her first appearance since September when she played Monday afternoon in a 1-0 loss to John Bapst.

The junior was injured during a collision about 20 minutes into a game against Hampden on Sept. 20 – Carey’s 16th birthday.

“A girl got a breakaway and I came out after the ball,” she said. “I don’t think it was her fault at all. It was pretty clean. She was just going for the kick.”

X-rays revealed two fractured ribs and an air bubble, called a pneumothorax, in her lung.

Three weeks later, Carey is mostly healed and just waiting for clearance to play again. The pneumothorax has almost disappeared on its own.

“It’s gotten a lot better,” she said. “I don’t have any pain anymore but I found that I can get short of breath.”

Carey was a key member of last year’s 9-2-6 Old Town team, which got as far as the Eastern Maine Class B regional crossover semifinals.

Carey was impressed with how the Hampden girls reacted to her injury.

“When they played us [Oct. 1] the captains came over and had gotten me a card and wrote stuff in it,” she said. “They’re being great about it.”

Potato-picking pride

The Presque Isle boys soccer team is embracing its potato-picking heritage.

Wildcats coach Scott Young recently handed out Maine potato pins to his team, which returns from its harvest break this week. Young picked up the pins at the Maine Potato Growers Association.

“Every time we come downstate it doesn’t matter who we play, we get called a bunch of potato pickers,” he said. “And it’s true. It’s part of our heritage and we should be proud of it. It’s hard work, and not a lot of people can do it. We can.”

Young estimated that more than half of his players have some kind of family tie to an Aroostook County potato farm.

The “Potato Picker” chant is often heard during the Eastern Maine Class A basketball tournament, during which fans in the Bangor Auditorium will trade cheers or taunts.

“Instead of allowing them to openly, blatantly say it, we put it back in their faces,” he said. “We are proud of being potato pickers. There you have it.”

Jessica Bloch can be reached at 990-8193, 1-800-310-8600 or jbloch@bangordailynews.net.