As a high school student athlete, the worst pain is not achieving the injury state. Indeed the worst pain is sitting along the sidelines recovering from the previous injury endured as I continue to watch my team execute skills and tasks that I used to execute with no problem what so ever. Never knowing when I will be allowed to get back out there is join them is worse. The way I achieved this state happened about seven months ago.

When I was a sophomore, I decided to join a basketball team with some of my team mates from my high school during the spring and summer. I saw this as a good idea because all of us could get used to playing with each other so when we come back from summer break, the chemistry between most of us could be already there and half of the battle would be conquered already. The last time I played basketball outside of school team was when I was in the eighth grade so I was quite excited to be able to start again. Our coach told us when we first started that we would play three tournaments a month and we would practice two to three times a week. I was very excited to able to play so much and be able to be a better player for the approaching season. Along with this, I started going to a dribbling coach to to make me better in this area of my game. With this schedule, it seemed overloaded because I got one day off which was Friday to a certain extent, but I was willing to do whatever to make myself better.

Further into the spring, a scheduling conflict had occurred the weekend of my first tournament. My father knew someone's child who had a wedding in Houston that we were invited to. Personally, I hate road trips so I would have argued, kicked and screamed against the proposal and state my case of why I would be better off at home. This would happen especially if I did not even know the people who were getting married. But now with the tournament, I actually had a good reason to try and convince my parents to allow me to stay home instead of travel about four hours south. There was a tournament the same weekend and I really wanted to play. After a week of convincing my parents, my family decided to stay in Lewisville to allow me to play.

The first game was good, we won, I do not recall the differential in score, but I was happy we won our first game in. Since the second game was close to the second game in time, my hope was that my adrenaline would feed into the next game.

The first half of the second half was bad for me in my opinion. I was just all over the place, my shots were all off and I was acquiring numerous fouls for no logical reason. The second half was a different story. At this time, I played the best I had all day. I began to focus and was able to help my team mates force some turnovers. After I stole the ball the forth time, I was able to convert the points and this made me feel like I could easily do it again. Yet, this specific time, the odds did not work out in my favor. I planted my right leg into the ground to cut my opponent off, but as she was changing direction I turned my body but never picked my leg up. Meaning that my body was turning one way while my knee popped out the other way. At the moment I had no idea what happened so I tried to take off running and ended up collapsing on my leg. When my body met the ground, all I can remember is that I was saying "ow, my knee, it hurts!" While I was rolling on my back clenching my knee into my chest and crying (not a lot of tears but enough that I could feel them roll down my face). As I look back at that moment, I was in pain, but I caused too much of a scene. Especially because I originally thought my injury results would read that I twisted or sprained my knee.

Worry struck me with my knee because of when my knee became the size of an orange. I went to the orthopedic doctor to find out what happened. They told me that in order to figure it out, I would need an MRI since the x-Ray showed no damage to the bones in my knee. The results come back in one day and that was the longest day of my life because I never thought what happened was that serious, I thought I was just being overdramatic as usual.

They delivered the news that I tore my ACL and anger just flew over me. This would be my second major surgery in one year. The worst part about this is that this injury happened at the beginning of summer. Trying to think positively about this and accepting the fact that I would be out for at least six months took a while for me to come around to adjusting to. Sitting in the sidelines watching my teammates progress while I slowly regress was hard since a person can make a lot of progression within six months and I hoped I could make that progess before my injury. Now I am rusty and regressing in the same time span. This was the most painful part because I wanted to be out there with my team, but I was warned that if I did not sit out long enough, I the possibility of re-tearing my ACL becomes quite high and then I start the whole process over again. So I eventually, with force, became accustomed to the act of patience which was not easy, especially because six months is a millennium and I naturally am impatient with everything.

All though I am not fully released yet, I am at least doing something which is absolutely better than nothing. Still attempting to do what is in my power to make myself better because I only want to make this mistake once.