Things have always gone as planned as far as soccer is concerned for Sacramento State junior midfielder Beccah Phillips. She began to play soccer at the age of seven and has been in love with the sport ever since.

“I was always kicking a ball around with my older sister,” Phillips said. “I was definitely a tomboy growing up.”

Coming into her junior season at Sac State, she was poised to help push the improving women’s soccer team over the top toward a conference title. She tied for second on the team in points (nine) as a sophomore, recording three goals and three assists in 19 games. The team’s success created a belief that, this season, the Hornets could take the conference. Everything was going as planned.She said she had only had minor injuries, but never a serious injury that stemmed from the sport she loves.

“I had never missed a game,” she recalled.

On Aug. 12, the plans changed. Phillips went for a tackle on a ball. Little did she know that this particular tackle, a play she has made literally hundreds of times, would end her season and leave her future in the sport in doubt. Her knee twisted and popped audibly “four or five times,” she said.The timing of the injury made it even more devastating.

“It happened probably in the last two minutes of practice,” she said. “I immediately felt pain – the worst I’ve ever felt.”

She knew the diagnosis before she was even helped off the turf. Torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), torn medial collateral ligament (MCL) and a partially torn meniscus in her left knee.

As she sat on the bleachers with her crutches and her newly rebuilt knee, she reflected back on some of the things she misses the most.

“This is the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through,” she said. “It’s hard because this is the best team we have ever had.”

She said she feels like she isn’t getting to know the new players because she can’t be out there with them.

“The hardest part is feeling like I’m not going to be a part of the team anymore,” she said. “Before this, I just always assumed that I would be healthy. I took it for granted. I think everybody does.”Phillips had surgery to repair her knee on Sept. 14. She currently sports a brace on her left knee and will be on crutches for another month. She had a vast support group awaiting her when she returned. A total of six other players on the team have had ACL injuries and some even had the three-part package that Phillips herself suffered.

One of these players is freshman forward Ashley Forbes. Forbes, in her second year with the team after red-shirting last season, suffered the same exact injury as Phillips. Forbes called the three-headed injury “the Holy Trinity of knee injuries.”

Like Phillips’ injury, Forbes suffered hers in a non-contact situation.

“It was during our first game,” Forbes said. “My cleats just got stuck and I heard a pop.”

Forbes recently returned for her first game action since the injury.

“It was nerve-wracking thinking about making that first cut,” she said. “But after that it just felt really good to be out there.”

Freshman midfielder/forward Kirsten Karl tore her ACL playing indoors in June of 2005. “I was more in shock than in pain,” Karl said of her non-contact knee injury. “I knew it was serious when I got out of the car and my leg buckled underneath me.”

Karl made her season debut against Boise State two weeks ago. Her chance came just one day after she proclaimed that she is “ready now.”

Senior Natalia Romo tore her ACL in 2005 as well.

“I went to take a shot and it just snapped,” Romo said. “I heard it pop and I knew it was bad.”

Phillips knows that a long road awaits her on her trip back to the pitch. She welcomes the challenge with open arms.

“I’ll be in heaven when I come back,” she said. “I’m really motivated to come back, maybe too motivated. I have to be smart about making sure I’m healthy.”

Until then Phillips, who is red-shirting this season, just wants the team to win, and she wants to be a part of it. By encouraging her teammates and cheering as a temporary bystander, she can ensure that she is, and always will be, a part of the team.

Perhaps her new plan will finish as intended.

Benn Hodapp can be reached at [email protected]