A break away on goal started it all.

The warmth of summer was slowly fading away on the first day of October, but soccer season was beginning to heat up.

Alexa Jacobs was heating up as well.

One month ago, the former Seton High School Saint was a defender, using her speed and strength to thwart opposing scoring opportunities, but her versatility and skillset convinced head coach Daniel Krispinsky to put her on the offensive side of the ball.

A couple weeks into the season, it paid off. She scored the first goal of her Ashland University career on a much-anticipated header.

The jumping and screaming after the ball caught the back strings of the net were nothing compared to the screams on this day, seven days later.

There was only one defender in the way of pushing her goal total to two.

The Purdue Northwest University defender got a piece of the ball and tabbed it in the opposite direction.

Alexa was determined, she lunged to retrieve the ball hoping to corral it and put a shot on goal.

As she attempted to regain control, an excruciating feeling shot through her right knee.

With a ‘pop’ and a ‘crack’ she was wrestled to the ground as screams followed.

Before the trainers rushed to her aid, she laid on the turf hoping for anything other than the reality she would face.

Michele Jacob watched from the stands as her daughter limped off the field. Throughout Alexa’s high school career at Seton High School in Cincinnati, she endured several ankle sprains and by the routine nature of the play her mother did not think this was any different.

Confirmation from the athletic trainer, Chris Riverta, ensured her that the injury was not severe, however, the intensified pain she felt throughout the day hung over her hopes like a storm cloud.

An MRI revealed the worse news she’d heard in a long time: a torn anterior cruciate ligament, lateral meniscus, and medial collateral ligament.

Commonly knowns as ACL, meniscus, and MCL tears.

Her freshman season was over.

What lied ahead scared her. She constantly questioned whether playing soccer again was worth it, but she went through with knee reconstructive surgery. A surgery that left permanent numbness around her right knee cap.

A surgery that foreshadowed pain and tears beyond her most hopeless nightmares.

“I knew I had to do it, so I eventually did it,” Jacob said, “initially, I was like ‘I don’t want to do this.”

Michele Jacob checked into an Ashland hotel for a week following her surgery. Her mother being a registered nurse put her profession into practice by taking care of her daughter. Her compensation came in the form of an eased mind and comfort knowing he daughter was taken care of.

On campus, Alexa tried to move from class to class by way of crutches, but the fatigue and discomfort seated her in a wheelchair.

The girl who sped up and down the lollipop soccer fields of Cincinnati at age three was now rolling herself around campus, unable to bare weight on her knee.

The girl who was always one step ahead of her competition could no longer take one step.

The girl who couldn’t stay off the field was now watching from the sidelines, spectating.

Amid her disappointment, Alexa’s mother was a constant voice of hope and encouragement.

“I know she’s a fighter, and I know her strength,” her mother said.

When the tears piled up after Alexa was pushed to her limits by a continuous passive motion machine that forced range of motion in her knee, she knew.

When Russian Stimulation sent high voltage electric currents through her damaged knee, she knew.
“She’s been my rock…I take her word for everything,” Alexa said.

She would need it. The process to return to soccer would take at least nine months and the rehab was brutal.
In the spring semester, three days out of the week Alexa walked into the Robert Troop center determined to make a comeback.

“I didn’t come all this way in my life to get knocked down by an injury,” Alexa said.
One day after the other she moved closer.

She was accompanied by two football players that tore their ACLs as well, and she leaned on them to get through.

Alexa constantly compared herself to them in order to gage where she should be, how hard she was working, and how close she was to playing again.

Jeremy Hancock, Ashland University Director of Sports Medicine, played the role of her physical therapist, but at times he wore the hat of her motivator.

“He was [harder] on me because I’m a girl and I should be beating the boys at therapy,” Alexa said.
As harsh at it may sound, Hancock challenged Jacob for the better, pulling grit out of her that she didn’t know she had.

“He always pushed me because I had more in me than I thought I did,” Alexa said.

Over the course of the semester Alexa leaped her way through her recovery after final exams, soccer had her undivided attention.

May, June, and July were spent at an orthopedic center back home, and with the season approaching in early August, Alexa wasted no time preparing.

Cars passing by her neighborhood park could see the five-foot-seven forward dribbling a soccer ball through drills and running with a clunky knee brace draped down her leg.

On those days she went alone, her only opponent being herself. She battled the thoughts of being a step slower and worrying if she would ever been the same.

By August she was ready to return. Greetings from overjoyed teammates excited for her return made the transition easier, but the anxiety of a re-tear troubled her. The doctor told her mother there was a one and fifty chance of reinjury. The probability was so small but multiplied by worry.

When her feet planted within the blazing artificial turf of Ferguson field in mid-august, whatever she contemplated off the field vanished with every cut and plant she made.

The rigors of two-a-day withheld her from full competition. Knee soreness anchored her to the ground as a precaution and she slowly expanded her endurances over the course of the preseason.

Alexa was a chained dog in the park patiently panting on the sidelines. She wouldn’t be let loose until an blow out contest against the University of Charleston.

Two days later she pranced up and down Ferguson field in her second consecutive game, as she scanned from the bleachers, Michele Jacob couldn’t help but take up the worry Alexa left behind when she stepped on the field.

“Every time she got the ball or had a challenge with somebody it was kind of hold your breath for a second because I was afraid something would happen,” her mother said.

When the clock hit all zeros, her worries would be put to rest, until she got a call four days later.

A weeping voice was on the other line.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

Her daughter detailed how during a team scrimmage during practice she felt a ‘pop’ in her left knee and collapsed meeting turf pellets and artificial grass when she hit the ground.

Tears crawled down her face because she instantly knew the familiarity of the pain she felt.

“I laid on the ground for a while and cried,” Alexa said, “because one obviously the pain, but two because I have to do this all over again.”

Her mother’s heart sunk into devastation as she received the news.

“I was devastated for her because she worked so hard and I didn’t know if she’d want to do it all over again, but right away [she said] ‘well this is what I have to do, I’ve done it before and I can do it again.”

Later that night, Alexa laid awake in pain that rubbered her of sleep. In a few days’ time it was confirmed: a torn anterior cruciate ligament and lateral meniscus in her left knee.

Despite the heartbreaking news, her love for the game has remained solid regardless of how many knee tears come her way.

“I feel more grateful of the time I’ve played and the time that I will hopefully have again,” Alexa said.
Through the sweat filled days of rehab and the worrisome nights Alexa faced the first time around she held on to a quote that pulled her past the pain.

“Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back… play for her,” USA Soccer Icon Mia Hamm once said.

Behind two torn ACL’s, two lateral menisci, and a torn MCL is the girl who fell in the love with the game on the lollipop soccer fields of Cincinnati. This girl travel across the east side of the country playing select soccer from the ages of eight on.

This girl isn’t finished.

“I’m playing for the girl who went through everything from three years old until now,” Alexa said. “Every practice I went to, all the running I had to do, everything. I play for her, I want to continue to play for her.”