Senior Grace Kim plays tennis with a brace after recovering from her ACL tear. Kim said she’s played more cautiously since she sustained her injury. (Submitted photo: Grace Kim)

Grace Kim, tennis player and senior, said her injury, in which she ruptured her ACL and tore her meniscus, came suddenly and as a shock. 

“I thought I had just tweaked my knee and that after icing it for a little bit, I’d be able to finish out the practice,” Kim said. “I never considered the possibility of a bigger injury even when my knee kept buckling when I tried to put weight on it. “

Kim said she spent the next couple of months recovering after her split-second injury.

“I wasn’t able to bear weight on my left leg for three months and spent the next three to four months building back my leg muscles and re-learning how to use them,” she said.

Kim is not alone in sustaining a serious injury while participating in high school athletics. According to the National Institutes of Health, over 15,000 injuries were reported from 2015 to 2019.

While Kim said the physical aspect of her injury took its toll, she said the mental impacts of her injury to be tougher to overcome. 

“It was really hard for me mentally knowing that I was losing all this time being injured,” Kim said. “It was especially difficult because I got injured right before the recruiting season and I had to grapple with the fact that I would probably not be recruited for college tennis, which has been a lifelong dream of mine.”

Jon Luke Getchell, football player and senior, said he agreed with Kim. Getchell added that after he tore his ACL during the football season, he found the mental process of recovering harder.

“(The recovery process is) honestly more mentally tough than physically (tough). Overall as time goes on (the recovery process) gets a lot better and I’m starting to feel a lot better,” Getchell said.

Getchell said rehab and physical therapy have been crucial in his recovery process.

“There’s a lot of rehab that goes behind sports injuries, especially with long term surgery (needing) ones to fully get back the functions you had before,” Getchell said.

Kim said regaining her strength in her legs was especially challenging during physical therapy.

I didn’t expect to lose as much muscle in my leg as I did, and I also didn’t expect for it to be so hard to get it back,” Kim said. “It really made me realize how much I take for granted having two strong legs.”

While injuries are commonplace in high school athletics, wrestling Head Coach Ed Pendoski said the wrestling team takes specific measures to minimize the risk of injury.  

“What we do as a practice habit is we don’t have hard days back to back,” Pendoski said. “Over time we’ve learned injuries can happen when people start wrestling really tired for a long period of time.”

Pendoski added that while wrestling practices remain competitive, the coaching staff allows players to heal if necessary in order to prevent avoidable injuries

“We have a policy in the wrestling room where if someone can’t compete because of something the trainer has said, they have to do their treatment and then go home,” Pendoski said.

Pendoski also said one of the best ways for athletes to avoid injuries is to take Advanced Physical Conditioning (APC) at this school.

“One thing that is really helpful is having the athletes in APC. The things that they do in APC and the lifts that they do in APC are very much injury prevention,” he said.

While coaches and trainers may take measures to lower the risk of injury, injuries still occur. Because of this, Getchell said that one of the most important things for the football team is flexibility and adaptability.

“With football, it’s not just about your starters, it’s also about how good your backups are because you never know when a starter could go down and (when a) backup guy needs to be ready,” Getchell said. “Having team depth is important because of injuries.”

Getchell added that in football, all athletes should expect injuries to shake-up teams and that the unpredictability which comes from football is just a part of the sport.

“(Injuries) can be defeating at first but that’s the beauty of football,” Getchell said. “You learn how to adapt and still figure out a way to win.”

While she has recovered from her torn ACL, Kim said her injury still weighs on her while playing, causing her to play more cautiously than before.

“It was difficult at first to regain trust in my knee and took me a while to become comfortable pushing myself again,” Kim said. “I wore an ACL stability brace for the first few months after I started playing tennis again, and though I play without it now and have nearly full trust in it, I’m always the tiniest bit cautious when I have to put a lot of pressure on that knee.”

While her injury slightly changed her play style, Kim said her outlook on her sport changed drastically due to her injury. Kim said she is now more appreciative when playing tennis.

“I no longer have an attachment between my performance in sports and my self worth and a lot of the pressure I put on myself went away and tennis became more fun for me,” Kim said. “I now see playing tennis as a privilege instead of a job.”