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Austin Cousino - talented player learns to throw with other arm

Once in a while, you here about a baseball player who injures their throwing arm, but they want to play so much that they learn to throw with the opposite arm. Billy Wagner comes to mind. Here is a story about a talented outfielder with the desire to play baseball, who switched to throwing right-handed following surgery on his left arm. Again, this is proof that throwing with both arms can be learned and is not a "gift" as some people might claim.


Staying On the Field
Cousino show strong desire to play
by Bubba Brown, 3 Nov 2010


After surgery to repair a posterior labrum tear, it didn't take long for Austin Cousino to start throwing again. 

No, his left arm didn't make a miraculous recovery, enabling him to breeze through the extensive rehab. Ever the competitor, he was merely trying to get back on the field by learning how to throw righthanded, a feat he mastered. 

"He decided he was going to do that after he was injured," said Tim Saunders, Cousino's coach at Dublin (Ohio) Coffman High. "It wasn't anything he practiced growing up. He decided he was going to play for us last year opposite-handed."



Read more 


High school baseball: Coffman star shows no rust after injury



Monday,  May 17, 2010 2:50 AM

The Columbus DispatchAustin Cousino was stoic when he learned he had a torn labrum, and he was a model patient throughout surgery and a laborious rehabilitation process that ate up the better part of six months of his young life.


But after Cousino endured 220-plus days of watching others preparing for or playing baseball, the waiting game for the Dublin Coffman center fielder had become something like from here to eternity.

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