A soccer player recalls tearing her ACL right before her first Women's World Cup. She read harsh comments online during recovery but used the time to fix weaknesses. The injury became a turning point that built resilience.
Chapters
I look back on my career, I had a million injuries. I was only 5 4, like 120 pounds soaking wet. So I was tiny, and I was playing defense against much bigger and stronger girls. And I was a dog, you know, I was throwing my body everywhere. So, you know. But I learned a lot about myself through those injuries. I think my ACL injury was probably the biggest one. You know, it. It happened at a not great time. It was right before my. Would have been my first ever Women's World Cup. I was starting, I was so excited. Tore my acl. I ended up going online mistakenly and reading some of the comments when the announcement came out that I would not be playing. And some people were like, you know, she shouldn't have been starting anyway. She'll never make it back. You know, when she's competing against these much younger, much talented players and there's this quote, it's telling me I can't then watch you work twice. It's hard to prove you wrong. And I just kind of. That was it, you know, I just kept grinding and grinding and grinding. And really, that gave me an opportunity during that break to focus more on the things that I wasn't as good at, to become more grounded, even though it was a little bit further into my career. And they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It's not true.
