I tore my ACL in December of 2017. It was my senior year of high school; I was captain of my team and I was ready for it to be the season! However things didn't go as planned. My team was playing in a showcase tournament where we played four 80 minutes games in two days. I was playing every minute of every game and was so exhausted by the time we got to the fourth game. I remember telling my dad on the phone on the car ride over to the game that I was "going to be in SUCH good shape by the end of this tournament." My current fitness levels just weren't compatible with the amount of soccer I was playing but I thought that I would just push through this weekend, recover afterwards and then be all set for the rest of the season.
It was about ten minutes into the second half of the game. We were playing on a turf field and I was wearing cleets (pro tip: wear turf shoes on turf!). I play defensive mid and when a ball went over our backline, I ran to chase down a girl on a breakway. I was in dead sprint to reach her and as I was running she cut back towards the middle of the field. I planted my right foot into the turf and turned to the middle of the field but my right knee stayed where it was and I felt a long stretch like a rubber band stretching out in my knee. I felt an extreme burst of pain and I fell to the ground holding my knee. As the pain concentrated in the middle of my knee and then spread out and dissipated reaching a lower intensity, I could hear the crowd cheering and I realized with extreme frustration that the girl that I had been "defending" had just scored a goal and my team was now losing.
I was sitting on the ground tightly grasping my knee, feeling deep down that the worst had occured. I remember whispering to myself "God it's in Your hands, its all in Your hands." I was helped off the field and stayed on the bench cheering on my teammates for the rest of the game. We ended up winning and it was such an exciting end to the game but personally, I felt absolutely awful as the gravity of the situation of my knee became apparent.
It was the night before Christmas Eve.
I sat at home icing my knee feeling absolutely miserable. I had to wait for the holiday season to end to be able to see the doctor. When I went to the Stanford doctor, after the physical examinations, she told me that it was not an ACL tear but that I had torn my meniscus. I got excited but deep down something held me back from being too happy (pro tip: you don't know anything until the MRI results come back). After getting my MRI results back, the worst was confirmed, I had torn my ACL.
I decided to go through with a hamstring graft and had my ACL reconstruction surgery on January 17, 2018.
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