Six Months After ACL Injury, Wong Is Back On The Pitch With UO Soccer
By Rob Moseley
Editor, GoDucks.com
When Caitlyn Wong asks “why,” she’s accustomed to finding an answer.
Wong’s curiosity and intellectual persistence have helped her become one of the most accomplished students in the UO athletic department, with a grade-point average above 4.0 in biochemistry. But they were little good this spring when Wong, a returning starter at center back for the Oregon soccer team, suffered her second major knee injury in three years.
Having redshirted the 2013 season with a right knee injury, Wong debuted for the Ducks in 2014 and started all 19 games as a redshirt freshman. Then, on April 1 of this year, she tore the ACL in her left knee. Another season lost to injury loomed.
“It was more painful (emotionally) this time, because I’d come back and been through a year with the team and saw how much we developed,” Wong said. “We went through a really great winter and spring term this past year, really improving our culture. You could see the changes in how we interacted with each other, on and off the field.
“That was the biggest loss for me: Am I not going to be a part of that?”
Determined not to miss another fall with her team, Wong attacked the rehab process with the same tenacity she exhibits in the classroom. She was blessed to have suffered a clean ligament tear with little corresponding damage to other elements of the joint, and after a vigorous recovery process Wong returned to the field Sept. 18, even recording her first career assist in the Ducks’ 1-0 victory over Portland State.
This weekend, Wong and the Ducks (3-6) will host Colorado (Friday, 7 p.m.) and Utah (Sunday, 1 p.m., Pac-12 Networks). When Wong was sidelined to start the season, UO coach Kat Mertz fielded a back end that featured a new goalkeeper and four new defenders. Against PSU, and again last week at UCLA, Mertz was able to mix in the veteran presence of Wong as well.
“Her experience and her leadership just really helps calm our back line a little bit,” Mertz said. “We have a brand new back line, a brand new goalkeeper, and when stuff is hitting the fan it’s nice to have a calming voice.”
Back in April, it seemed unlikely the Ducks would benefit at all from Wong’s calming presence on the field. Her injury occurred on a Wednesday, and two days later an MRI was performed. The results indicated an ACL tear, but Wong wouldn’t meet with a specialist who could confirm the diagnosis until the following Monday. That left a long weekend to contemplate her lot.
Unable to grasp the “why,” Wong moved on quickly to “what now?”
“Last time, I was kind of scared and nervous,” she recalled. “This time I was like, well, this is what it’s going to be like. Things happen.
“I kind of took a no-fear approach to it. I really have nothing to lose at this point. I’ve already redshirted, I’ve already done the whole sitting out a year thing. If I get hurt again, well, I’m already hurt.”
Once Wong had been presented with the official diagnosis five days after her injury, she was offered a choice: return to the field “ACL deficient” – a quicker road that also risked damage to other parts of her knee – or undergo surgery again. Knowing hers was a clean injury, with little swelling that would need to subside before surgery, and with a great base of strength and fitness coming out of the winter, Wong made a quick decision.
“All those things gave me probably the best shot I had,” she said. “That’s why I decided to go for it.”
Wong spent the rest of the spring rehabbing with athletic trainers while her teammates participated in spring practice. Over the summer, she was at the Casanova Center for a few hours each evening, progressing every couple of weeks through the stages of recovery that mark the return from an ACL injury.
Initially, Wong was given a recovery window of six months, putting her return date around this weekend. As she passed various mileposts, though, doctors began to eye the Portland State match.
“Returning in six months is not unprecedented; it’s definitely on the earlier side,” said Dr. Greg Skaggs, director of athletic medicine at Oregon. “A lot of that has to do with work ethic, and what kind of shape you’re in – those things make a difference.”
Mertz said Wong’s teammates drew encouragement from watching her recovery process.
“You just watched how hard she was rehabbing, and how hard she was pushing to come back, it made the team go, ‘Wow, that’s awesome,’” Mertz said. “It was motivating to see how focused she was through that process.”
Wong said some of the same traits that help her achieve in the classroom were assets in the return from injury.
“It’s a battle with myself – I’d basically feel guilty for the rest of my life if I didn’t go to rehab one day when I had the time for it,” Wong said. “I’d feel so guilty inside. With school, I think the commonality is, I’m a perfectionist. That has caused me problems, but I think it’s helped me too.”
Wong decided on majoring in biochemistry after exploring subject matter as diverse as English, computer science and business earlier in her academic career. She’s considered pursuing medicine in graduate school, but also law school or another track.
Wong’s intelligence makes her an asset on the field as well as off, Mertz said.
“You see it every day,” the UO coach said. “She’s attentive, she’s listening, she knows what’s going on. We always like to recruit players who have a strong academic desire, because they bring that to soccer – you’ve got to be smart, you’ve got to solve things. We don’t call timeouts. You’ve got to be able to solve things on the field, and it’s nice to have that with Caitlyn.”
By August, Wong had proven enough to doctors that she was cleared to return in mid-September. The speedy recovery left open a higher risk of re-injury, they stressed. And coaches will have to monitor her minutes, to avoid allowing Wong to play with so much fatigue it compromises the joint.
But Wong is willing to accept all that. She may not understand the “why” of her second major injury in three years, but that’s a rare question she’s OK not being able to answer.
“This time around, I’m going to go as hard as I can go, play until they have to carry me off on a stretcher,” Wong said. “I’m sick and tired of it being taken away from me.
“Instead of worrying about why I’m getting hurt, I’m not going to let it interfere with my love for the game and how much I appreciate being out there.”
