"Hear It From Me" is a series that serves to tell the stories of Chicago State student-athletes through the most powerful voices they have: Their own. Each month, a Cougar student-athlete pens a first-person account detailing they're passionate about, an experience they've had or anything else of their choosing to further show who they are. Read our first two here:
Today, Saige Thor tells us her story.
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My life was flipped upside down by the plant of my right foot.
One minute I was warming up for my first home college match, and the next thing I knew I was lying flat on my back with my jersey pulled up over my face, screaming in pain.
Tearing my ACL was something that I never thought would happen to me. I was so confident in my body and my strength that I sometimes forget that I am just a human too.
The day after I went down, I went to the hospital for X-rays and a bunch of other medical stuff that I wasn't necessarily paying attention to. I was more caught up in the fact that I came to college to play soccer and to learn, and now half of that had already been taken away from me.
But I had no idea that this would be the easiest part of my 14-month long recovery process that changed my life in ways I had no idea it was going to. The one thing I do remember thinking the moment I had realized what happened was that I had done much harder things than this before, so I was going to be fine. As it turned out, I was the opposite of fine for a while. Every two weeks or so, I had to drive four to five hours home for surgery and then to countless appointments to see if I was healing correctly.
After my first appointment, I remember hearing the scariest words I had ever heard before. I was really struggling to get my leg straight again, and my doctor told me that if I couldn't do that, I would never be as fast as I was before. I recall just sitting there panicking, thinking that I was going to lose something that I worked so hard for my entire life: soccer.
To fill the time between appointments when I was at school, I spent a lot of my days with my best friend who used to go to Chicago State and play on the soccer team. Honestly, if it wasn't for Maddie, I don't know if I would still be playing soccer today. We would go get coffee together, talk and share our mindsets and our goals with each other. I remember one time she asked me why I went to a Division III school (North Park University), and I was kind of shocked by the question. I honestly thought that a Division III school was all that was in reach for me. When I told her this, she started laughing at me and then told me if I plan on coming back to play soccer again, I should consider going to a higher level. After she transferred out of Chicago State, I got into contact with
coach Costa through her. Right off the bat, I felt like I could really trust him. I was honest and up-front about everything. I told him about how my rehab was going and how bad things actually were. He never judged me. We just ended up talking and getting to know one another. By the end of one of our calls he told me, "I can tell you're a good one, I think you belong here." It felt like a dream come true. I was going to get to play Division I soccer in one of the greatest cities in the world. It really put the pressure on because I had a bum knee, and the clock was ticking on getting it better to play at CSU.
Out of all of this, however, rehabbing my reconstructed ACL and meniscus was the hardest part. I lost my medical insurance right before I tore my ACL and had to do the first part of my rehab with my athletic trainer at North Park, Lauren. She did so much for me to try and build back my muscles, but I still was really struggling a lot because I didn't have a true physical therapist to help me.
She did do a wonderful job with her knowledge and what she had available to her. I can't thank her enough, because if I didn't have her in the beginning, I wouldn't have had anyone to help me.
I was still about a month behind where I should have been when COVID hit. I didn't know it yet, but the COVID situation was going to be my saving grace. I was sent home, and all of the doctor's offices and rehab places were closed, so I was pretty much on my own. Lauren would text me YouTube videos on what to do for rehab, and I would follow them every day on my back porch and do them in front of the reflection of the sliding glass door to be able to see my form.
But things got kind of dark for a while. I felt really helpless and trapped by my leg. I wanted to have a positive attitude so badly, and I don't think that I ever really told anyone that I was crying in my bed by myself most nights because I couldn't even sleep properly because of my leg. Some days, it was hard to get out of bed and walk because I would go so hard on my leg and not give it recovery time. I wouldn't be able to do things for a week, because I hurt it so badly trying to rehab it myself.
I just kept telling myself to just do it and to keep trying. I would argue with myself on days when I didn't want to do rehab, and I remember thinking that I had to do it if I ever wanted to play again. I wasn't even doing it for myself at that point. I was doing it for the girls on my team because I had to be ready to help them when I got there.
Then, one day things switched and everything kind of magically got better. In the beginning of May 2020, I got my insurance back and started real rehab. My physical therapist, Chris, tested me on the first day and thought I had surgery two months prior because of how bad of shape my knee was in. But he helped me so much, and we worked so hard together that by the time I went to school, I was one month away from being cleared.
I arrived in Chicago on August 5 and was ready to be cleared by around September 10, making it so I was only going to miss around three games. Then, the preseason was held off until almost September, because the WAC canceled all competitions in the fall. The delay gave me until the spring to take all the time I needed to get cleared. I started my rehab with Pedro (former Chicago State assistant athletic trainer), and it was smooth-sailing until the end. I had almost no pain and could feel my body get stronger every day.
The day I was cleared and played again felt like the gate of my cage was unlocked, and I was finally free again.
This was one of the biggest mental tests of my life. But I am so grateful for it, because if it had never happened, I would never have grown and made it to where I am meant to be.
