I have had the unfortunate yet eye-opening opportunity to experience what it is like to be a college athlete battling with a chronic injury.

I say unfortunate because it has been grueling, frustrating, endless, and tiresome.

I say eye-opening because it has been rewarding, informing, and has taught me to take better care of my body.

I play field hockey at the Division II level and battle with chronic shin splints and stress reactions in my shin bones. Now most people when they hear that, they write my issue off as typical or aboriginal. “Every athlete gets shin splints at some point in their career,” I have heard time and time again, as I am sure many other athletes have heard from AT’s or peers who often tend to belittle their struggles. Unfortunately, my injury has not been the “typical” case of shin splints that come and go for one season. They have been a piercing pain through my two legs for hours throughout the day. They have been sudden unbearable aches while sitting in class and jolts of pain waking me up in the night. My pain has nearly debilitated my ability to walk at times and use the stairs. My injury has fought back with me throughout the past six months of rehab and continues to pull me down every opportunity it gets.

What I have noticed is that it used to be one thing to be injured in high school, you got to sit out for practice, keep score, or just cheer on your team and everything was fine because it didn’t feel like that big of a deal. In college, an injury can change everything. An injury can turn practices into dreadful hours of anxiousness as you watch your teammates get better and better every day, as it feels like you are moving backward in time on the sidelines. All of a sudden you want nothing more than to be healthy and able, fighting for playing time amongst your teammates. The once dreaded conditioning during practice becomes something you wish you could even attempt without numbing amounts of pain throughout your legs. And all of a sudden the desire to simply be the strong healthy athlete you always dreamed of being in college becomes a far-off fantasy, a mountain too far and high to climb, and a distant glowing light in the night.

My injury changed my perspective on my collegiate field hockey career. I really think I took all of it for granted before my injury flared up. I didn’t realize the immense amount of strength and endurance I had in order to complete the things I was doing every day in practice. My world was flipped upside down when my family brought a dark reality to me. If my injury didn’t get better after a year of rehab, then I better consider filling out applications to schools closer to home and start packing my bags. Suddenly my injury became the controller of my fate, it became something much bigger than just an injury.

I think this is what a lot of people don’t understand about the life of a collegiate athlete. An injury can send them home, ending their careers, ending everything they have known their whole lives, and a success can send them on their way to fame and fortune. The life of a collegiate athlete always feels like a spinning top. It’s fast-paced but never really stable. The uncertainty is close within reach, and it is rare when everything spins just right for a long period of time. People often write off injured players as those who hold the team down, or the weaker ones, putting even more shame and guilt on the athletes who are already drowning in it. What many don’t see is the countless hours spent in the athletic training room before and after practice. They don’t see us running into class late with ice bags up and down our legs. They don’t have to pull out their credit cards to pay for $300 customized orthotics to make sure their feet are cushioned just right on impact. They don’t have to buy new pairs of running shoes every three months. They don’t have to spend three days of their week in either physical therapy rooms, doctor’s offices, or imaging centers, trying to find the true root of the problem.

Dealing with an injury as a collegiate athlete does not just mean dealing with an injury. It means dealing with harsh realities of uncontrollable works of nature throughout your body. It means dealing with frustrations 24/7 as you have to tell your coach again and again that you still aren’t 100 percent. It means dealing with looks of disappointment, disapproval, and disengagement from teammates and peers. An injury in a college sport can either make or break everything you, as an athlete, have ever known.

I have not yet been broken by it; I have not yet overcome it, but I’m sure as heck fighting through it with all I have.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" — Philippians 4:13