For high school athletes, extreme injury is not something that is out of the ordinary. According to Hopkins Medicine, about 3.5 million kids in youth and High School Sports end up with injury each year. Athletes take a lot of time prioritizing their physical health to prevent injury and to stay healthy. For most high school sports, the season is roughly three months. Athletes often practice nearly year-round but only have a limited time to showcase their skill, and play the sport they love competitively. With a major injury, that time can easily be cut short.
At Milford High School, there are a number of athletes who have gone through major injuries. Among these athletes, some have truly inspirational stories, and deserve to be highlighted for the adversity and hardships they have overcome.
On July 7, 2020, Senior Allison Deep, a four-year varsity soccer player, was doing summer conditioning training at STS. Deep vividly remembers everything that happened that day, and was willing to share her experiences.
“We were warming up doing an ‘A Skip’, and when I jumped and landed, the muscle in my right leg contracted and shattered my tibia,” Deep shared. “I broke my leg in 5 places.”
The tibia is a bone located in the lower leg, and is the second biggest bone in the body. It is a fundamental bone to carry and support one’s body weight.
In extreme physical pain, Deep was immediately rushed to the hospital and was urgently admitted around 10 a.m. Deep said that her surgery could not take place until 6 a.m. the following morning, so she had an agonizing night before the doctors could start the healing process.
“During the time while I was at the hospital before my surgery, they kept checking the blood flow in my leg to make sure that the broken tibia didn’t rupture into any major arteries,” Deep shared. “The doctors didn’t tell me this at first, but there was a 35% chance that I could’ve lost my leg.”
Deep received surgery to correct her broken tibia, which involved three screws to put the bone back into place. She was given an estimate of a six-to-eight month recovery period, with lots of bed rest and physical therapy.
The physical pain was significant, but the mental suffering that comes with an injury was also extreme.
For the first two weeks of her recovery period, Deep had a cast that went from her thigh to her toes. Because of this, she was unable to move, and was on bed rest in her living room.
“For months, all I could do was sit in bed and do nothing,” Deep said. “Everybody’s life kept moving except for mine. I was stuck.”
This healing period was appalling for Deep, the most notable part being the intense pain that never seemed to end. “The breaking point for me was that the pain never went away. Whether it was mental or physical- it came to a point where I thought it was going to last forever,” she said.
In two weeks time, Allison started physical therapy. She eventually had the cast taken off and slowly worked on the movement of her leg. She had physical therapy once a day to work on the flexion and the motion of simply raising her leg on her own.
In Sep. 2020, Deep was still walking with crutches, and had not put weight on her leg in a few months. With the thought that she was gaining strength and mobility back, she wanted to try to walk on her own.
“I held my crutches to the side of me, so they were not supporting a ton of my weight, and I slowly started walking. But at the same time it hit me. I didn’t know how to walk anymore and I literally had to teach myself how to walk from square one.”
Working little by little, in Jan. 2021, Deep started putting the work back in at soccer, doing simple drills. While taking it easy step by step, she sprained her ACL, a frustrating setback. There was nothing she could do about this injury, except just take off more time and ice her joint.
Despite all of the obstacles that Deep encountered, she was still motivated to get healthy enough to play soccer in the spring of her freshman year at Milford. While still taking things slow, and the roadblock of a sprained ACL, Deep was still not back to playing soccer at her full potential.
Spring rolled around, and Deep made the JV soccer team. Disappointed, because she knew she was not at her full potential and had more that she wanted to achieve. Within two weeks time, Deep had moved up to varsity, and had been placed full time on the varsity roster ever since.
“Being on varsity as a freshman had always been a goal of mine, and honestly after my injury, I thought that it was something that would never happen for me,” said Deep. “That was the moment when I realized that things were going to be okay.”
Now as a senior, Allison Deep is an accomplished soccer player, being part of the LVC all conference team, and a 4-year letter winner and starter- while playing club soccer for the Michigan Jaguars in the off season.
“Now I am at the point where I don’t have any more fear of injuries, no more braces or pain, and I can finally just be me. Soccer is fun for me again.”
Deep’s recovery is truly an incredible story of overcoming huge obstacles and adversity with injury, and the road she took to become the amazing soccer player and person she is today.
(Photo Courtesy of Jerry Rea.)
