Personal Narrative: The Legacy Program

Sophomore year I was playing at a soccer tournament with my old team. I was playing a great game even though the score was not reflecting my hard work. Towards the end of the game I jumped up caught the ball landed, my body went one way and my legs went the other, then I fell to the ground. Everyone around me had heard a pop, I knew it was my ACL. From this moment in my soccer career I knew I needed to be determined and to be focused on my recovery in order to get back out there.

I went up for a layup and got pushed hard in the back. When I came down, I felt my knee buckle and immediately knew something wasn’t right. The sound it made was alarming, proving to be a serious injury - a fractured femur. It was my junior year and I was looking forward to playing basketball and starting to train for the next football season.

I got my arm out from under my head and the second I looked at my radius and ulna, I felt excruciating pain shoot up my arm. “Call 911” my coaches yelled at each other as if they were both thinking the exact same thing. I was concerned but they were terrified. My parents were called.

My ACL Tear Journey At The Hospital A quick turn on a soccer field led me to the worst experience in my life. A while back in my sophomore year I tore my ACL while I was practicing for my first soccer game of the school year. I made a quick turn without positioning my feet correctly on the ground. I thought that I broke my knee, but I never knew that after that day I would have experienced the worst day a month after on February 15th.

He made contact as I was planting my right leg, and my knee twisted and i heard the loudest “POP” of my life. In an instant the worst pain of my life shot through my my body starting at my knee and I collapsed. I was helped off the field with the help of the Okemos lacrosse team; Mitchell Ringer, the JV coach, rushed over to see how I was, along with the trainer present. The trainer took a look at my knee and said the worst possible

During the game which I suffered my injury I caught the ball midair around half court. While I was still in the air I went to make a move, but when I landed on the court I heard a popping noise and my knee buckled. I was then on the ground when I heard the whistle blow and saw Coach Friesen and Coach Conley running over to me. At first I thought that my calf was injured but there was an intense pain coming from it, but it eventually faded and I realized my knee was the real problem.

I made it to the locker room, my trainer Chris gave me the shot. As he set it down I saw the label it said, “Cortisone.” And I knew what it was I instantly knew that my knee was bad, because this was high medical grade medicine. As I put on my equipment I looked around me.

Everyone rushed over to me. I saw everyone huddled around me with worried looks on their faces. Everyone was asking if I was OK, but I didn’t answer because I was in so much pain. My coach had me walk to the dugout and poor water on my knee while he got me an icepack. I put the icepack on my knee but it felt like my knee was on fire!

Not to mention my ever so lovely coaches. Coach Robinson was about 6’1” and about 210 pounds. Coach Castro was about 5’7” and about 170 pounds. There was no one else going to state so of course i had to wrestle them. At the time

I kept going for the guy next to me performing to the best to his ability. Success was the result of all the hard relentless work done throughout June into August. I acknowledged that my team had a good group of seniors who were high character student-athletes I spent most of childhood with. Ultimately finishing with a record of 3 wins and 7 loses taught me many lessons on becoming a better person and

The ride to the emergency room was calm and boring, I just sat there anticipating how bad it was, hoping it would not be too bad. We finally got to the emergency room, the ride felt like forever. Rapidly, we entered the building, the doctors took me back to the room, and he laid me on a bed. The doctor came into the room and saw a bloody hole in my foot, as he stayed calm, he checked the deep cut. He found that one tendon was torn, which is a good thing, there could have been more torn tendons and muscles.

We finished the season with one loss and we went into the tournament with our first game against Republic and we won pretty easy. We played against Bothwell in the final in Marquette. I was really nervous as I can remember and it was really hot in the gym. The game started and we were up by 4 at halftime. The second half started

I broke my tibia, fibula and cracked my platelet in my ankle. My mom rushed me to a hospital where we waited two hours for me to be seen. After a while my mom got frustrated and very impatient she then helped me back into the car and rushed me to children’s hospital where they wheeled me to an emergency room and put me to sleep. They began to place my bones back into place.

Sitting in the nurse's office, I called my parents and they said they would be there as soon as possible, but camp but a little over an hour away. I ate probably five popsicles while sitting in the nurse’s office, but they didn’t taste as exceptional as they usually do since I was in pain. Originally, I was supposed to stay three more nights, but I guess my camp experience was over for that summer. Soon enough, my parents got there and we started our drive back home. My mom thought it was broken, but my dad swore it was just a sprained ankle that would heal in a week or two, so we waited until the next morning to go to the doctor to find

1 I woke up monday morning with the one thought in my mind - Rye Neck. We had gone all the way last year to the section final with them, and after me hitting the pipe in the final minutes to win it, they scored on the counterattack and won the the section. I had never experienced a loss like this one. I was the kid on the team who before the season started, no one really knew if I was good or not.