In the summer of 2024, senior Isaias Rodriguez was rushing for the soccer ball, as a weird feeling developed in his knee. He suddenly fell to the ground, and realized he was badly injured. The diagnosis was an ACL tear.

It was the finals of a summer club tournament, and Rodriguez wasn’t the first one on his team to be injured.

“We were already losing, and one of my teammates already broke his arm,” Rodriguez said.

Recovery took almost a year, ending Rodriguez’s junior year of soccer for DGS, and sidelining him for most of the club’s summer campaign. Rodriguez slides back into his chair as he is asked about recovery, taking longer to process his words.

“It was mentally taxing knowing your life’s not going to be the same, and I couldn’t walk for six weeks,” Rodriguez said.

However, even after recovery there can be long term issues. Rodriguez very quickly found this out. After the injury, he feels like a different player in a different game.

“Yeah, now the game feels so different. I know I was better before it, so, like, now it just feels weirder and stranger than before,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez’s defensive role is also one of the toughest positions for the knee, with slide tackling and sliding as a crucial part of blocking shots and stopping attacks.

Rodriguez has been playing soccer since kindergarten, and he got into soccer through family, but he didn’t want to play soccer for DGS; however, his friends thought otherwise. He slows down his pace of voice to think about the story that got him into the soccer team.

“I remember freshman year, I didn’t want to play soccer; I wanted to play football, but my friends just told me to go to the soccer camp, and I knew once I got to the camp that this was for me,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez plans to continue playing soccer for the DGS team in his senior year of high school, mostly because of the supportive environment from the coaches, who aided him during his injury, but also for the love of the game.