Michelle had skated a perfect routine but just months ago crutches were her constant companion and defeat had controlled her the day she injured her knee flooded her memory as she stood frozen amid the screams of fans.

- "a nonrestrictive clause functions as a modifier to a noun (that is an object, person or concept). these clauses can be described by the following three options: it is set off by comas, it contains a subject and a verbs and it adds nonessential information to the sentence.

for example, in "here is bill gates, who confounded microsoft software company" we can identify "who confounded microsoft software company" as a nonrestrictive clause modifying the noun bill gates. this clause can be describes as a nonrestrictive clause because it is separated by a comma, it adds nonessential information to identify who bill gates is and it must contain both a subject (who) and a verb (confounded)."