Shanel Preston’s left leg is locked straight, in the jaws of an apparatus that looks like something out of a horror movie.

She shuffles around the Karns City High School gym with the aid of crutches. Every move she makes is cumbersome and she needs help reclaiming her crutches, tucked behind the Gremlins’ girls basketball bench, to get back to the locker room at halftime.

“I’m burning my crutches as soon as I get off them!” Preston said in a tweet.

Preston is forced to watch Karns City girls basketball games instead of participating in them, partly because she is female.

Preston’s ACL snapped in the first half of a game against Venango Catholic in mid-December.

She needed surgery. She is facing a long and painful rehab.

She’s only a sophomore.

Sadly, though, she is not alone. Butler County is littered with female athletes who have had their ACL shredded.

Female athletes are 10 times more likely to suffer an ACL tear than their male counterparts. No one knows why, even after years and year of looking.

There are theories, though — wider hips, the smaller size of the ACL and even hormonal differences.

None of that helps Preston or Slippery Rock’s Morgan Siebka or Butler’s Cait Baxter — athletes who have recently had their play and their seasons sabotaged by their knees.

Baxter, who tore her ACL during a basketball scrimmage shortly before the 2011-12 season, had no idea she was at a higher risk of knee injury.

“The surgeon told me that,” Baxter said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Siebka’s ACL gave out during the first quarter of her first AAU game this summer.

Two years ago, she shared the Butler Eagle Girls Basketball Player of the Year Award with Tina Lipps of Union.

She is a vastly different player as a senior these days.

“I believe it changed the type of player I was before I got hurt,” said Siebka, who averaged nearly 16 points per game her sophomore year, but only six this season.

Siebka said it has hurt her chance to get a college scholarship to play basketball.

“I missed my last year in AAU, which is the time when colleges come to watch,” she said.

Siebka, though, refuses to use it as an excuse. She refuses to fall into the “why me?” trap.

She is finding other ways to help her team — playing strong defense, becoming a better passer and ball handler and showing tremendous leadership.

The thick, dark scar that runs across her knee, though, reminds her how fragile things are.

“It ... made me appreciate work ethic and self respect,” she said.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.