MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan – Her body went one way. Her right leg went the other. A telltale pop and Jen Black crumpled to the floor, knowing her right knee had been seriously damaged.

“I tried to cry at first, but I couldn’t,” Black said, adding that as the seconds passed, the realization settled in: Her anterior cruciate ligament was torn. “I knew I couldn’t play any more in the tournament, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to play soccer. And then I really cried.”

It was Feb. 24, 2011, Day 4 of the Far East Division II Tournament in Daegu, South Korea. Black’s Robert D. Edgren girls basketball team had a chance to stay alive in the double-elimination playoffs if they could just beat Osan American in this knockout game.

Teammate Sabrina Cavazos stole the ball. Black turned and dashed upcourt toward the basket, step for step with an opposing defender.

But as Black ran toward the basket, the Osan American defender turned into Black, forcing her to use evasive tactics, leading to the injury.

Osan went on to win the game 54-42, outscoring the Eagles by 18 points after Black left the floor. But for Black, the pain was just beginning.

A torn ACL is viewed as the “kiss of death,” a Navy orthopedic surgeon on Okinawa says, for athletes who play sports involving pivoting and cutting, such as basketball, soccer and football.

The ACL provides “rotatory stability” for the knee, says Cmdr. (Dr.) Sonya Waters of U.S. Naval Hospital Camp Lester on Okinawa.

“People can live without an ACL,” she said. “It depends on how unstable the knee is and the things you want to do, sports that require pivoting, planting, turning, cutting. It’s not an emergency procedure, but if you intend to go back, it’s recommended you have the surgery.”

Most times, the ACL is rebuilt, rather than stapling the torn ACL, which rarely works, Waters said. A tendon graft is taken and wrapped around the knee where the ACL should be, holding the thigh and shin bones together.

Rehabilitation can then take six to nine months and is “partly determined by ... how much hard work the patient can tolerate,” Waters said.

Black underwent surgery July 14. Prior to that, she engaged in exercises designed to strengthen the muscles around the knee, to include squats and leg lifts. Waters calls that “pre-hab,” to reacquire range of motion and quadriceps and hamstring strength before surgery.

Before and after surgery, Black spent much time at soccer and basketball practice, helping out wherever she could, but frustrated at not being able to contribute more.

She’d scored 20 goals and added eight assists in soccer as a sophomore, when the Eagles finished second in the Far East D-II Tournament. Without her, Edgren went 1-8 in spring 2011 and was eliminated on the third day of the D-II tournament.

“It sucked being out,” she said. “I wanted to practice every day. I thought I could play even without an ACL. I tried to build up muscle strength to try to play before the end of soccer season, but there wasn’t enough time, so I helped Coach (Justin) Edmonds with practice.”

Basketball wasn’t much better; she’d come to practice and shoot around, but didn’t take place in team drills or workouts until she was finally cleared in mid-January by her physician.

Two weeks later, she finally hit the court and paid immediate dividends for an Eagles team that lost its first nine games. She scored 17 points and the Eagles won 41-30 at E.J. King on Jan. 28.

“Oh, my gosh, you don’t even know,” she said of returning to the court. But in the back of her mind, she was playing it cautiously.

“I didn’t want to push too hard,” Black said, for fear that she could aggravate the injury. “It took awhile; until that first game, I didn’t have confidence in my knee. But once I trusted my body, everything fell into place.”

And the Eagles got back a valued commodity, coach Sarah Richardson said. “The biggest problem was getting the ball down court and scoring,” she said.

“I didn’t have a anybody with that confidence at point guard. With her, we get good passes, fast breaks, leadership on the court. She’s a hard worker, she loves the game, she has the stamina to go two games non-stop with that kind of intensity.”

She did just that Feb. 4, playing back-to-back games against E.J. King and Hachinohe North. The Eagles lost the first one and won the second. So far, Black is averaging 20.1 points and 8.5 assists per game.

The question for the Eagles is whether they got Black back in time, Richardson said. “If they come together as a team, they’ll cause some damage” at Far East Feb. 20-24 at Edgren. “They have to believe they can do it.”

ornauerd@pstripes.osd.mil

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