How an ACL Tears

To avoid retears in the knee, Martin focuses on graft selection, choosing the strongest tendons to repair the ACL. He also said he’s now adding an internal brace to the new ACL graft during surgery to act “almost like a seat belt” to provide the graft with additional protection.

Diligent, intense rehab is the best way to avoid another ACL injury, said physical therapist Amanda Somers, owner of SSI Physical Therapy in Greer, South Carolina. Rehab requires athletes to engage in repeated strength and agility exercises after the initial healing process to prepare the knee and muscles around it for vigorous physical activity.

Somers tailors her rehab methods to each patient’s sport. “When I work with a soccer patient, I have worked with them on a ball, worked on their jumping, put them in different soccer situations,” she said. “So, they’re not going back on the field without the confidence in their knee that they need.”

Somers said she works with dozens of athletes with torn ACLs every year, many of whom play women’s soccer. She said her strategy is getting them to buy into the process.

“It all starts in the beginning. You have to have the athlete’s trust,” she said. When athletes get closer to playing, she guides them into more advanced exercises. “They trust that I wouldn’t have them do that if they weren’t ready. That helps me push them physically while also keeping them mentally confident.”

The rehab process also helps with the mental preparation of returning to the field. Former professional soccer player Blakely Mattern said athletes simply need to go for it at some point after rehab.

McCormick, who is a first-year midfielder on W&L’s team, is in the middle of rehab, spending her time in the training room and building her strength and confidence in her knee.

She has days where she doubts her progress. But she credits Wood, the athletic trainer, for pushing her out of her comfort zone in workouts.

McCormick has begun practicing with limited contact, but she is looking forward to being fully cleared by the time the team returns to school in August for preseason camp.

“Just personally, I know it’s going to be a long road,” she said. “So, I’m not there right now. But I know when I step back on the field in the fall, I’ll definitely get myself there.”

“I remember wearing a brace when I was getting back to playing games,” said Mattern, who played center-back for FC Twente in the Netherlands in the 2011-2012 season. “I was getting ready to go out on the field and had my brace in my hand, ready to put it on. And I remember thinking to myself, I have to take a leap of faith at some point and trust all of the training I had done. So, I turned around and threw my brace off the field and played without it. I never looked back.”

Mattern runs a girls-only soccer training facility in Greenville, South Carolina. She coaches players, helps them with college searches, and also talks to girls who have suffered ACL injuries. She said she reminds them that if they prepare their bodies physically through the tough rehab process, they can be the same player they once were. But she said female players struggle with the mental aspect of recovery more than the physical side when they return to the field.

“I think a lot of time with ACLs, you get to that point where you’re trying to get comfortable with the thought that you’re healthy again,” she said. “It’s like, you actually have a brand new knee, but mentally, it is hard to think about that after you’ve been through what you’ve been through.”

“She has definitely given me so much confidence during rehab,” McCormick said. “Each step of the process is difficult, but the high I felt after reaching all of these milestones was super awesome and motivating.”

Wood said athletes need constant encouragement from trainers to keep morale high throughout recovery.

“I think setting short-term goals is really important, and rewarding those goals, and celebrating those goals is especially important when you have such a long rehab,” she said.

Like many female soccer players, McCormick knows she is at high risk for another ACL injury. But she’s not giving up.

“I feel like I have a lot of unfinished business,” she said. “Watching from the sidelines during recovery gave me perspective on my true passion for the game. I owe my recovery to the twelve-year-old girl who dreamed of a college career to try my very hardest. I want to make her proud.”