On January 15, I dribbled a ball across an indoor turf, not knowing it would be the last time my cleats would touch a ball for the next eight months. A skiing accident the following night would leave me in a sports medicine office with a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and a partially torn medial collateral ligament (MCL) in my knee.
In women’s soccer, this injury is your worst fear because it feels inevitable. It seems as though every other girl around you has an ACL story. It’s so surreal until the story is yours.
Eight months later, I can say this: my world didn’t end when I got my MRI results back. It didn’t end when I hobbled to school the next Monday on crutches. It didn’t end when I missed my spring season. It didn’t end when I went into surgery in April. It didn’t end when I learned to walk again. It didn’t end when I was sidelined from my favorite sport.
At first, the shift was jarring. I was just weeks away from a full spring season of soccer, sailing, and track. Instead, I watched those starting lines pass from a physical therapy (PT) office, struggling to bend my right leg past ten degrees. And even once I got full range of motion back, surgery loomed. At times, it felt cruel that in my lowest moments, the true low still hadn’t arrived.
Pre-op time in the gym, PT, or doctor’s office replaced what I had expected to be afternoons spent out on the water or field. Surgery upended it all again, from which I came out worse off than when I first got injured.
I had no idea how difficult those first two weeks would be. I lived out of a motorized chair, dreading even the smallest movement. During this period it was the loneliness I most recall: the isolation surpassed any of the physical limitations. No one around me was going through quite the same thing to empathize. And, once I started to “appear fine” again, the world assumed I was. No one could see the invisible weight—the limitations, the instability, and the emotion of continuing to watch my sport from afar.
Even so, every time I needed help I was grateful that my dependency on others wasn’t permanent. That perspective was everything. In my inability, I started to notice how often we take mobility for granted. I longed to put on socks while standing. Laying with my leg stuck straight, I would have given anything to be able to curl into a ball. To roll over in bed. To stand in the shower without pain.
But somehow, amid the pain, I eventually turned a corner, the healing came. Each milestone came faster, first weight bearing, then one crutch, to none, to no brace, to squatting, to jumping, to weight training. Your body relearns, and it’s breathtaking. The same leg that gave out on me was building itself back. I watched my muscle and strength return.
My injury gave me a newfound reverence for my body. It’s not perfect, but it’s mine, and it’s worth protecting. That forced stillness gave me a hunger to move again, and when I finally could, it reignited my love for soccer in a way I never expected. But, what stayed with me more is the respect I gained for myself.
The stagnation of recovery, in fact, gave me time to reassess the rest of my life. I gained so much clarity based on the aspects I truly missed. I cleaned out the noise in my life, cut out activities, routines, habits, and people that drained me, and rewired my lifestyle with intention. Divvied up my time between extracurriculars and hobbies that only truly bring me satisfaction and happiness. I no longer waste time on things that don’t serve me. Time became sacred. My energy, even more so.
ACL injury is sudden, unexpected, and overwhelming, and as if it isn’t bad enough, you are now sidelined from the sport you love. My comeback is not just physical—it’s emotional and far from a steady progression. But, undoubtedly, the successes grow more prevalent than the setbacks, and the pain grows long forgotten. The life lessons won’t fade with the scar, those I will cherish forever. I’ve fallen in love with my sport all over again, not because it defines me, but because I’ve discovered what it means to fight for something you love when it’s been taken from you.