Three letters that spell heartbreak

Waubonsie Valley midfielder Bri Rodriguez (second from left) prays with her parents, Mary and Jim, and Dr. Richard Erickson (right) before going in for surgery.
(Kate Szrom/Naperville Sun)

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It was a simple pivot, one Bri Rodriguez performed countless times on a soccer field.

But she'd never heard that noise before, a sound she described as knuckles cracking. Or felt pain flare up from her left knee like that.

She buckled to the ground and crawled toward the sideline. Her body told her the injury was serious - her anterior cruciate ligament had torn.

Rodriguez wasn't listening.

In a day and age when almost all athletes, especially female ones, know the symptoms of an ACL tear, Rodriguez refused to let that prospect cross her mind. She had never been injured before, so she figured a serious one would hurt more than this did.

"I didn't think (it was the ACL) at all," she said. "That was the last thing I thought."

Already the pain was receding. It was 15 minutes into a Class AA state quarterfinal and Waubonsie Valley was locked in a scoreless tie with Maine South. Not being able to help the Warriors in their quest for a second consecutive state championship was something Rodriguez didn't want to consider.

So she got up. With a trainer's help, Rodriguez began walking along the sideline, heading around the field to the bench area. Soon she was walking on her own, the limp dissolving as she broke into a jog. She told Waubonsie coach Julie Bergstrom she was OK and re-entered the game a few minutes later.

When Rodriguez crumpled to the turf a second time, this after a corner kick shortly upon her return, the reality began setting in. With tears streaming down her face, she rode off on the back of a golf cart, still clinging to the possibility it wasn't a major injury.

It wasn't until halftime when Rodriguez heard a conversation between her father, Jim, and the Waubonsie athletic trainer that Rodriguez first heard the letters A-C-L in reference to her left knee. The next afternoon an MRI exam confirmed she had torn the ligament, which stabilizes the knee and attaches to the thigh bone and shin bone.

"When I found out, I cried for like two hours," Rodriguez said five days later. "I'm still bummed. Everybody's been telling me it happens for a reason and I'll be stronger when I come back. So I guess I'll just have to work hard."

Common suffering

Rodriguez is not alone. Her scenario is played out every season in almost every sport that involves jumping, planting and cutting. And it's twice as likely for females to suffer serious knee injuries than males, according to a study published this month in the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

When asked how many people she knew who had suffered a torn ACL, Rodriguez rattled off eight names of athletes in quick succession. Six were girls. The list didn't include Emily Oyster, a Neuqua Valley girls soccer player who sat out last season while recovering from ACL surgery in her right knee.

Oyster estimated "nine or 10" of her club or high school teammates have sustained a similar injury.

"When you've played soccer and you're 17, you've seen a lot of people who have torn their ACL," Oyster said. "I heard a pop. I couldn't walk. When you injure it like that and it feels like it does, you know it can't be anything else."

Many factors account for the higher rate of serious knee injuries among girls than boys. Some researchers believe it has to do with differences in ligament strength, leaping ability, the relative strength of the hamstrings and quadriceps, and the anatomy of the knee.

Because blood vessels are severed when the ACL tears, it needs to be replaced with a graft from somewhere else. Three common options include taking it from the patient's hamstring or patellar tendon, or from a cadaver.

Oyster opted for the hamstring. Rodriguez chose the patellar option for her replacement surgery, which took place Monday at Central DuPage Hospital. The procedure was performed by Dr. Richard Erickson, who handles between 30 to 40 ACL replacements each year. He said he sees two to three times more girls than boys.

Long road back

Four days after surgery, Rodriguez sat on the couch in her living room watching reruns of "One Tree Hill" on the Soap Network, her left leg stretched out inside a bulky, black brace. A tube running through the brace provided a steady flow of cold water from a cooler on the floor.

She kept a laptop to her left and her cell phone to her right. Rodriguez had been to two rehabilitation sessions already and would go to another one Friday. Thursday was a day off, although she needs to do exercises at home every day to keep the knee from stiffening.

It's the start of a long, arduous, and painful process that many have gone through.

"The beginning two weeks were just brutal," said Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton, a Neuqua graduate who redshirted her senior basketball season at Purdue last winter with a torn ACL. "I just wanted to get up and walk. I couldn't shower as much as I wanted to. It was just bad. It felt like being in prison."

For Rodriguez, it means not joining her Eclipse U-17 team for its attempt at a national title. She already watched from the bench as Waubonsie won the state crown last month. She's planning to do the same thing for her club team, which advanced to the United States Youth Soccer Association Region II Championships this weekend in Rockford.

Oyster knows exactly what that's like. She hurt her knee in October while playing for her club team, Windy City Pride. She waited until December to have surgery and missed her junior season with Neuqua, serving as the team's statistician when she was able to get to games.

"I played soccer since I was 3 and then all of a sudden you're completely out - you can't do anything," said Oyster, who has a half-inch-long scar below her knee and a matching one on the outer side. "Taking that away - not being able to play soccer - was huge for me because it was so much a part of my life."

Rodriguez had never been away from the sport for more than a month or two at a time since she started playing 13 years ago. She'd never missed a game because of injury before this. And now her best-case scenario is to be ready to play when the high school season begins in March.

"The eight months (of rehab) gets me," Rodriguez said. "That's a long time."