ZENA’S STORY: navigating an acl injury

My name is Zena-Marie, I am 18 years old and i have been playing football for 11 years. I have played for various academies such as Crystal Palace, QPR, Barnet and Wimbledon. With that being said, September 2022, whilst playing for Wimbledon U21’s against Milton Keynes U21, I landed after a tackle and felt a dramtic popping sensation in my knee. I was taken to hospital, where my knee was extremely swollen, x-rayed and advised to rest and ice my knee for the next 2 weeks. Whilst trying to investigate what was wrong with my knee, it took ages to be referred to the Orthopedic Clinic at my local hospital. In the meantime, i was back and forth to my GP where was constantly told that ill had just pulled a muscle in my knee.

Finally after 2 months of constant appointments, I was referred to my local hospital to be examined by an orthopedic specialist. She carried out numerous ACL tests on the effected leg and found that my knee had an excessive amount of movement which wasnt normal. This immediately rang alarm bells, and i was given a date to have an MRI scan. The MRI results outlined that I had a complete rupture of my ACL and had some slight tears to my cartilage. Every footballer knows that this is the most detrimental injury that you can sustain during your playing career and development. I also knew that i would need surgery to rectify the issues in my knee and this would also mean that I would be out playing for a year. I began to suspect that all my plans to further my development before flying out to the States to begin my college journey was also on hold- it was just the beginning of feeling all kinds of emotions and mental challenges.

Fast forward almost a year, I was finally given a surgery date, August 15th. I was overrided with joy and happiness because I knew this was the beginning of my long awaited rehab pathway. I am currently 4 weeks into my rehab journey, and it has been nothing short of emotional challenges and uncertainty. However Its only lead me to build up an armour of resilience and positivity. Along my ACL hike, after my own research and many talks with my surgeon, it had been found that Women are 8 times more likely to fissure their ACL’s than men. Studies allude that surfaces, astro turf pitches, may be too hard to accommodate the structure of females’ bodies; having wider hips . Another reason could be that women are morelikely to breach their ACL ligament during their periods. Therefore, this suggests that unlike boys, females are at an immediate disadvantage on the pitch.

Over the years, it has been a hidden secret that ACL injuries are most common within womens football. I have come to realise that I havent had a coach educate myself or my teammates about ACL injuries and how to prevent them from occuring. In order to put a hold to this statisic of ACL injuries within women sport from growing, coaches of female sports teams must be equipped with the knowledge and have the ability to include drills and exercises during training sessions, which teaches their athletes how to prevent these injuries. Where ACL injures frequently occur during matches, the exercises and skills taught during training sessions can then be utilised.