ACL Injuries In Sports

It is a common scene in sports today.

 

While watching a game, a player goes down and grabs his or her knee. Trainers run onto the field to tend to the injured player, and a cart is usually needed to take the player off the field. The TV announcers say the player won’t be able to return for the rest of the game. Later, it is revealed the player suffered an ACL injury and is out for the rest of the season.

 

The injury is a debilitating one and the recovery to get back in the game is grueling. Decades

ago, this injury ended careers. Now, it’s possible to be back in the game in less than a year.

 

The ACL, short for anterior cruciate ligament, is one of the four main stabilizers in the knee.

The ACL joins the femur and tibia bones in the leg. It makes sure the knee doesn’t bend too

far forward or backward. According to WebMD, the ACL is the most commonly injured knee

ligament.

 

High school, college, and professional athletes are all at risk for ACL injuries, and it’s common

in nearly every major sport.

 

The University at Albany campus is no exception. Dozens of athletes across most of the school’s

19 DI sports have had ACL injuries, and many athletes were able to recover and keep playing their

sport.

 

The Moment

 

Usually, it’s pretty easy to tell when someone has injured an ACL. The athlete falls down, grabs his or her knee, and can’t get up.

 

“Most of the time you’re down and it takes a little while to get back up,” UAlbany Assistant Athletic Trainer John Sylak said. “It’s common. We see it quite often.”

 

For athletes, the most innocent of movements can lead to a torn ACL,

without even being touched by a member of the other team.

 

UAlbany soccer player Celia Balf tore her left ACL twice, with the second

injury coming during the spring season of her freshman year. She recalls

the injury happening during the most ordinary of soccer plays.

 

“It was a pretty low contact practice. We were just swinging the ball

around. I took one step with my left leg, I planted it, and my knee just

gave out, out of literally nowhere,” Balf said.

 

Lacrosse player Chris Underwood has torn the ACL in both of his legs. The injury to his left leg occurred when 10 years old. But during his high school senior day, his right leg met the same fate.

 

“We were a man down. My coach told me to go get the ball,” Underwood recalled. “I ran, set a kid up, stepped, planted, threw a check, stripped a kid [of the ball], and my cleats, because we were playing on turf, they stuck and my knee kept going. I knew it was torn.”

 

Football linebacker Michael Nicastro had a clean bill of health during his time at UAlbany. But in the first quarter of the 2015 season opener at Buffalo, Nicastro’s season came to a premature finish.

 

“It was a wide receiver screen pass and I had come straight down the middle to make the tackle. As I was making the tackle, somebody hit me up top and then somebody cut me right at my knee,” Nicastro said. “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. It felt like my knee was dangling from there. I knew something was wrong as soon as it happened. I was screaming on the field and in a good amount of pain.”

 

The Surgery

 

If an athlete wants to return from an ACL injury, he or she will need to have surgery to

reconstruct the ACL.

 

Before the surgery, Sylak says it’s beneficial for the athlete to do “prehab” to increase

the range of motion and strength going into the surgery.

 

For the surgery itself, another part of the body can be reconstructed to become a new

ACL. Usually, it’s a patella tendon or a hamstring. Occasionally, a cadaver may provide

the solution, but that has complications.

 

After her first ACL tear, Balf opted to go to a cadaver for a solution. It didn’t turn

out well.

 

“For my first surgery I had a cadaver, which still kind of freaks me out thinking about it,”Balf said. “It clearly failed so I blame that person for not having strong muscles.”

 

For her second surgery, Balf had the cadaver replaced with her own hamstring. That healed the knee, but the surgery left Balf without a left hamstring.

 

In Underwood’s case, the patella tendon was the fix.

 

“My doctor said it’s the most reliable graft,” Underwood said. “Everyone I know who has had the cadaver done, within six months, their ACL has been stretched out again or they have re-torn it because it’s not yours.”

 

Nicastro also opted to have his patella tendon taken to fix his ACL, and he hasn’t experienced any complications since his surgery.

 

The Return

 

Each ACL injury is different, but an average recovery time is usually about 6-10 months, according to Sylak.

 

“Most of the time, you could start jogging around week 12, depending on if there are other complications,” Sylak said. “You can have a general timeframe, but it depends on how strong the athlete is and the sport too.”

 

Currently in his third month of recovery, Nicastro says his recovery is going as planned.

“It’s going pretty well. I’m kind of above what I should be doing right now. I’m a little ahead of the process,” Nicastro said. “They say it’s a 6-8 month thing, I hope it’s a little faster because of the way I’ve been rehabbing every day.”

 

Nicastro hopes to be cleared to practice in time for the summer session to start, so he can be fully prepared for his final Great Dane season.

 

In Balf’s case, summer surgery forced her to sit out all of her sophomore season. But

the effects of the surgery were more than just physical.

 

“For me, the hardest part was getting comfortable planting really hard into the ground

and kicking the ball,” Balf said. “Getting the strength back in my left leg and making

myself comfortable enough to be running full speed, planting, and kicking was really

hard. If you’re fearful, you’re going to get hurt again.”

 

Balf finished her Great Dane career by leading UAlbany to it's first ever America East

championship in 2015.

 

After his first knee injury as a 10 year old, it took Underwood nearly two full years to

get back on the field. After his second injury during his senior year of high school, a

switch in programs complicated the recovery. When Underwood came to UAlbany,

he needed to switch to the Great Danes’ training program.

 

“With the switch of programs, there was some stuff that got missed, and it prolonged my

recovery. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just different programs,” Underwood said. “It really took

until the spring of my sophomore year for me to feel normal again.”

To date, Underwood has played in just 13 games for UAlbany during his three years on the team.

 

These are just a few stories of ACL injuries on campus. The injury is painful, the surgery is gross, and the recovery is grueling. But if an athlete loves playing a sport, it will take more than a pop in the knee to ruin his