With a rise of ACL tears in women’s sports, Emma Roberts, a junior on the Girls Soccer team, has had the experience that no athlete wants to endure. During her freshman season, she tore her left ACL and did not get cleared until the end of school year. Unfortunately the pre-season of her sophomore year had come to an end as she had torn her right ACL. Emma’s recovery process showed her resilience to setbacks, and her comeback story she’s writing.
ACL tears are one of the most difficult injuries to recover from. Emma had started all over from square one to get back on the field.
“It was a lot of learning the fundamentals like blocking, jumping, running, and slowly starting to get back into soccer stuff,” said Roberts. “Some stuff just came back naturally and I had to get back into the basics.”
With having the same injury twice, but at different times, Emma had two different experiences with each process.
“I think my second one was more of a mental challenge from it and I just didn’t want to do it all over again,” said Roberts. “My second one was more painful and harder to recover from, being right foot dominated.”
There’s so much to learn over the time period you have on the sidelines emotionally and physically. It showed Emma how much she wanted to get back to the game.
“As a stronger person,“ said Roberts. “It made me realize how much I’m dedicated to soccer and the love for the game, especially for doing it twice.
Finishing up her last two years of high school soccer, Emma has one main goal in mind for her final seasons on the playing field.
“My goals are mainly just to keep building strength and prevent myself from having this happen again,” said Roberts. ”My main goal is being able to play my senior year.”
It is such a struggle to have to sit out in competition; however, Emma had found the key to making it through the course of her two seasons off.
“Build a stable group of people that you can surround yourself with,” said Roberts. “Find things to occupy you in the time off, and find people that you can talk about it with.”
