At five years old I started playing soccer for my local community grasshopper team, which was coached by my dad and aunt. From there I would go on to explore many other sports such as gymnastics, basketball, and track. Along with occasionally participating activities such as volleyball, softball, kickball, and more for fun when out with friends or family. As I got older I learned stretching, keeping up my physical strength and health is a great way to avoid injuries, unfortunately, some injuries cannot be avoided.
Growing up I was always in good physical health along with having an adaptive mindset, which allowed me to excel in most activities I participated in. While I would watch others struggle with injuries, I was blessed enough to have coaches who cared about offseason conditioning along with pregame stretching to protect me from preventable injuries. For as long as I can remember, my coaches would always make it imperative that everybody on the team does at least ten minutes of active stretching before both practice and games. While at the time it might not have seemed like it was doing that much it was a great habit to build early on so I would have them when it mattered.
Throughout my middle school years, I was involved in multiple different sports such as soccer, track, and basketball. As you go up in sports, kids begin to get stronger and competition becomes more competitive. This paired with body changing makes it almost impossible to not run into injuries. I would occasionally run into a rolled ankle or stoved finger, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little bit of ice and rest.
The spring of my eighth-grade year would be the last season I would be injury-free. At the time in my life, not only was I participating in middle school track, but I was also playing club soccer and AAU basketball which made for a pretty busy schedule. My day would add up to around three hours of practice every day after school along with tournaments and games on the weekend, and track meets spread throughout the week. With a schedule like this stretching, resting, hydrating, and keeping a healthy diet is imperative to not only keep healthy but perform well. While this was hard on top of homework and school I did the best I could and for the most part it worked. Then that summer I started high school basketball and soccer conditioning, which while it was very difficult, I managed to continue my injury-free streak.
At this point in my athletic career, I wasn’t worried about getting injured and believed if I stuck to what I had been doing then I would be good, but mid-way through my freshmen soccer season with less than a miniature left in the game a girl would clip me from behind, which would not only bless me with a boot for two weeks but put me through ACL surgery and nine month recovery. This would be one of the most challenging experiences of not only my athletic career but my life.
While the surgery itself was bad, so was the period leading up to the surgery. Not only could I not play, but I had to sit and watch all my friends play not knowing the next time I would be able to get back on the field. I also had to think about the fact that my first high school basketball season had ended before it even started and contemplated whether I would be able to run track or not.
Then, after the surgery was worse because reality had set in and there was no going back. At first, I was excited to get to physical therapy but after a while, the repetitiveness started to drain my energy especially when I was seeing minimal improvement. But after a long few months, the progress finally paid off and I was finally able to start non-contact and catch the end of track season. I continue to have problems, but the more work I put into getting better the more things start to go back to normal, and going through physician therapy showed me even more experiences I can do to prevent future problems like that.
After going through that experience, it made me realize that no matter how far behind you think you are there’s always a way to catch back up if you constantly put in the work. While there is always the possibility that another injury could occur, I know that I can always bounce back with the right people and the right mindset.
