Being A College Athlete Essay

School athletes overcome many obstacles in their lives such as injuries, late nights, hard practices, and plenty of physical exhaustion. Injuries for women happen often in basketball, especially ACL tearing. The ACL is one of the four main ligaments that hold the knee together. Without this ligament, your knee would collapse while doing physical activity, such as, twisting, cutting, or landing a jump. Tearing my ACL was an experience that I will never forget and constantly recollect on to push myself to better accomplishments.

During a district varsity basketball game, in the very first seconds of the game, the worst moment in my high school career happened. I jumped straight up from the ground to intercept a pass, landing with my knee unbalanced and twisting to a different side. As soon as my feet

February 26 I went into the surgery room, frightened of something going wrong. It was a rough two weeks, harder than any conditioning or the flu I have ever had. The pain was unbearable. With every move of my hip, ankle or knee came a sharp pain, bringing tears to my eyes and me calling for my mom. Soon came therapy;The most boring and uncomfortable thing someone could experience. It lasted for 7 months, and I was constantly working out and pushing through endless pain to begin walking, or even running again. Everyday there was an exercise to do. Some days I was all alone, trying to motivate myself to get better. Telling my parents, “I want to be done with this, I’m so tired of not being able to do what everybody else does.” I had this conversation several times with my family.. Even my coach began to worry that I would not be playing next season. Sucking up the pain and my emotions, I looked at my goal of being released and went after it. Getting my strength back in my leg, and realizing I was capable of doing the same things I had once done before the surgery, opened my eyes and made me back to the player I once