Friday, October 2, 2026
For much of her senior year, Elmont Memorial High School pitcher Layla Rossianno took the softball field carrying more than the responsibility of leading the Spartans.
After slipping on ice during the winter, the 18-year-old hurler developed persistent back pain that gradually worsened into numbness in her foot and a severe ache caused by a herniated disc pressing on a nerve in her lower back.
Even as the injury made everyday activities increasingly difficult, Rossianno remained determined to finish the final softball season of her high school career before undergoing surgery at Long Island Jewish Valley Stream hospital.
The decision required balancing her health with her commitment to her team.
“I’ve been the only varsity softball pitcher since maybe 10th grade, so there was really no better option than to play through the pain because they never really trained anyone younger than me to pitch,” Rossianno said. “I kind of came to the decision on my own to play through it and wait to get surgery afterward.”
While she scaled back practices to conserve energy for games, she continued pitching despite pain that eventually reached a 10 on a 10-point scale, in addition to weakness in her leg.
She relied on treatment from the school’s athletic trainer before games, along with medication, stretching and heat to manage the symptoms. The emotional challenge of being unable to fully participate in practices was often just as difficult as the physical pain itself.
After initially seeking medical care, Rossianno and her mother, Lariza Singh, struggled to get answers despite multiple evaluations and imaging. An MRI eventually revealed a herniated lumbar disc, leading them to seek a second opinion from Dr. Brian Mercer, a spine surgeon with Northwell Health’s Orlin & Cohen Orthopedic Group.
According to Mercer, Rossianno arrived after already discussing treatment options, including injections and surgery, with previous providers. Imaging confirmed a moderate-sized herniated disc compressing a nerve, causing sciatica, weakness in her calf and ongoing pain that had persisted for months.
Although surgery was recommended, Rossianno wanted to delay the procedure until after the softball season concluded.
Mercer said postponing surgery for several weeks was not expected to worsen the disc itself, but delaying treatment too long can increase the risk that nerve-related weakness may persist.
“She’s a very tough young lady,” Mercer said. “She was actually able to do it. She was adamant that even if she did need surgery, she wanted to delay it until after the end of the softball season, so that she could help her team finish and support them.”
With Rossianno planning to leave for college later in the summer, her family ultimately determined that she should undergo surgery close to home so she could recover before moving out of state.
Mercer performed an endoscopic discectomy at LIJ Valley Stream using a minimally invasive approach designed to remove the portion of the disc compressing the nerve through a small incision with limited disruption to surrounding tissue.
Minimally invasive techniques have become an increasing focus across surgical specialties because they can help patients safely return to normal activities more quickly.
For Singh, watching her daughter continue playing through the injury was difficult. She encouraged Rossianno to stop competing out of concern that the condition could worsen but understood how important finishing her final season was to her after years of playing the sport. Softball also carried personal significance because Rossianno’s late father coached youth softball and introduced her to the game.
“When she was on the field, it was like you didn’t even know she was in pain or not,” Singh said. “She didn’t show it. It didn’t show on her face or in her holding her back. Nothing like that.”
Rossianno completed her senior season and was named the team’s Most Valuable Player, while maintaining a 4.0 grade point average.
Her severe back pain was relieved almost immediately after surgery, while the numbness in her foot resolved over the following two weeks.
“I wasn’t too sure about doing too much, like dancing, things like that, wearing heels,” Rossianno said. “But there was definitely a point within recovery that I knew that I was going to make it to prom and grad.”
She attended senior prom and graduation, and after an evaluation, her physical therapists determined formal rehabilitation was unnecessary beyond home stretching exercises.
This fall, Rossianno will study animal science, first attending Wake Technical Community College in North Carolina before planning to transfer to North Carolina State University, with the goal of becoming a veterinarian.
Looking back, she considers being able to play in her senior game one of the defining moments of her high school career. After months of uncertainty, pain and recovery, she was able to finish both her softball career and senior year on her own terms.
