In 2006, female soccer player Kayelyn Satkowski had her best college season as she lead the team in scoring with nine goals and three assists. Satkowski was one of four players to play in all 21 matches. However, in 2007 Satkowski’s world turned upside-down when she sustained a season-ending knee injury.

While Satkowski was checking into a ball, the girl on the other team clipped her heel; as her right leg planted, her body went forward, which tore her ACL and partially tore her meniscus.

“My first thought was, ‘I won’t be able to play soccer again,'” Satkowski said.

At that game was Satkowski’s mother, Kelly Scott. Watching Kayelyn play soccer since she was 4 years old, Kelly has seen her daughter take many falls throughout her career, but this one was different.

“We all kind of just waited for her to get up and what she did that was different was she grabbed the grass,” Scott said. “When she grabbed that grass I said, ‘It’s her knee; there’s just nothing else it could be.'”

Satkowski had to have surgery. Her first surgery was on July 14, 2007, to replace her completely torn ACL and fix her partially torn meniscus. However, when the doctor performed the surgery, he found a quarter-sized piece of cartilage missing from her knee.

To fix this new problem, the doctor had to perform a procedure where he fractures the bone – in Kayelyn’s case, her femur bone – and lets it bleed to create a bloody mass, which in turn will act like cartilage. This procedure is called a micro fracture.

This was a major setback in Kayelyn’s rehabilitation because now to make sure that the micro fracture worked, she would have to not bear weight on her right leg for six weeks. Not even a toe could touch the ground. She would also have to use a Constant Passive Motion machine for eight hours every day for six weeks.

“She never, ever put pressure on that leg and never stepped on it,” Kelly said. “She was the model patient because for her, it meant playing soccer again.”

After the six weeks passed, she began to do lightweight baring with her injured leg. Just four days after she began, she began to feel sick. Like most college students, Satkowski called her mom and told her that she wasn’t feeling well; her mom thought she had the flu. Forty-eight hours later, things went from bad to worse.

“Kayelyn called and she said, ‘I need you to come help me. Something is badly wrong with me. I’m very sick,'” Kelly said.

When Kelly got to her daughter’s apartment, her knee was extremely swollen, bright red and hot to the touch. Fearing for her daughter’s health, she took her to the hospital where they drained Kayelyn’s knee and ran some tests. The doctor came back with the results saying she had an infection, but it wasn’t serious and sent them home.

Unfortunately for Satkowski, her stay at home was short lived.

She started to feel better and regained her appetite and asked her mom for some pancakes. Her mom said sure, but said she was going to walk the dog first. She grabbed her phone and noticed she had a new voicemail, and as luck would have it, it was a good thing she didn’t make Satkowski her pancakes.

The voicemail was from the emergency room physician saying that Satkowski had a very serious staph infection, and not to feed her and get her back to the hospital immediately – she was going to have to have surgery.

When they arrived at the hospital, Satkowski’s doctor was there and delivered the terrible news that he might have to take out everything he did to her knee. This meant taking out her new ACL and the micro fracture because staph infections might have ate away her new ACL.

“My doctor told me that it was pretty much an 80 percent chance that I wouldn’t play soccer again,” Satkowski said.

Originally the doctor suspected that she might have Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, a potentially life threatening strain of a staph infection. Luckily for Satkowski, when the doctor went into her knee, her ACL, meniscus and micro fracture were all still intact and he was able to clean her knee out.

However, she wasn’t out of the dark yet. Staph infections can come back and they still were not sure what type of staph infection she had. They treated it as if she was infected with MRSA. They had to put a pick line in her arm so that she could have IV antibiotics for eight weeks, which she would have to administer herself.

“This went from being, ‘My kid won’t play soccer again’ to ‘My kid might not live or walk,'” Kelly said.

Satkowski persevered through all of her hardships with a strong will and the support of her family, friends and teammates.

“It’s been amazing. My whole team was there when I had staph. They would all come to the hospital and hang out with me,” Satkowski said. “My mom was my biggest support through all this; she never gave up on me.”

Satkowski worked her surgically-repaired leg back into shape and was able to play soccer again. She also set three goals her senior season: to play soccer again, score a goal and to earn a spot on the starting line-up. Of course, when she got into her first game, she had some jitters.

“I was scared. Very, very scared, but I felt good. It was nice to play soccer again,” Satkowski said.

Kayelyn scored her first goal since her tragic injury seven games into this season.

“After everything I’ve been through, to score again was one of the best moments,” Kayelyn said. “I really wanted to do that.”

Kayelyn earned her first start of the season Oct. 25 against Weber State.

“She just earned it,” head coach Randy Dedini said. “We haven’t given her anything; she’s earned everything she’s gotten.”

Kayelyn Satkowski has endured many ups and downs during her quest to play the game she loves again, and learned a valuable lesson – to look forward and never give up.

“I didn’t give up – that was the biggest thing for me,” she said. “I always wanted to play soccer again so I kept that in the back of my mind. And (now) I am.”

Felipe Molina can be reached at [email protected]