Hi! My name is Alicia. I'm an athlete and exercise enthusiast, and if you're reading this page, you are too. No matter your age. No matter if you're no longer competing or playing your sport. No matter if you're injured. Let me tell you how I define athlete. Athlete to me is a state of mind that complements but is not dependent upon a set of movements someone executes with their body. Anyone who is an athlete can access this state of mind where they are able to endure and persevere in the face of challenges. An athlete exhibits mental fortitude, strength in the face of adversity, discipline, motivation, perseverance, and hard work all while fine-tuning and enhancing their physical craft. That’s why no matter the age, if you have that mental toughness, you will always be an athlete because you bring that into everything you do even if it’s not sport.

I was a first-born girl, meaning I became an honorary son. My father introduced me to sports very early on. In the backyard, he would pitch to me a beach ball and I would swing at it with a big, red plastic bat. There was no way I could miss. Whacking that beach ball was so satisfying and fun. After my father laid the groundwork, I soon realized in school that I was good at sports. I excelled in gym class, won ribbons during field days, and always did well in that pesky Presidential Physical Fitness Test, except for that damn V-Sit and Reach.

During this time, I was an only child to pretty young parents who were trying to figure out things for themselves too. See, my parents are first-gen. My grandparents on both sides came to NY from Puerto Rico in search of better opportunities. In an effort to give me a better life, my parents moved me to the suburbs of Long Island from Brooklyn. They thought I'd be safer, have access to better education and all the things they never had. Well, the effects of this were not great at first. I didn't fit in at school. I didn't have a lot of friends. I wasn't from there and didn't look like I was from there. My one saving grace was sports - moving my body, hand eye coordination, being fast. Those were things that had gotten reinforced. Those were ways that I knew I was good and liked. So in second grade, this brave little girl came home with a flyer from school asking her parents to play in a newly forming lacrosse league. My parents looked at each other, and looked at me, asking if I was sure I wanted to do this. There was no lacrosse in Puerto Rico, and definitely no lacrosse in Brooklyn. They didn't know what this sport was. I said, "yes,", so we went to Modell's and bought a stick. I was the only second-grader on the team but my athletics career had kicked off.

Soon thereafter, I was playing softball, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer. Did I mention I was also a big kid? Meaning, I'm the same size that I am now as a fully formed adult back in the fourth grade. Yeah, I was huge. And overscheduled. Eventually I had to pick one sport and given that my father had played basketball and I was baby Shaq, it was befitting to stick with basketball. CYO turned into AAU which turned into Varsity. I ate, breathed, and slept basketball. My favorite movie was Love & Basketball. I wanted to be Sue Bird or Becky Hammond. I'd play basketball in school for the school team, then I'd play basketball after school for my AAU team, and then travel to tournaments on the weekends. When it was summer, I went to basketball camp hoping to improve my skills and get on scouts' radars. My teammates became my best friends. Their families, my extended family. It was not only a sport, it was a lifestyle. But at this level of competition, also came fear of failure, performance anxiety, looking to external sources for my own affirmation, looking at my teammates' as competition, perfectionism, and family rupture. 

By the time I was a senior in high school, I had burned out. Though I had been in communication with a couple of D3 programs and had met with the coaches and visited campuses, I chose another school that had already selected their team and I would not be on it. This was the first time in a long time, I wouldn't be on a team. Naked, exposed. Who would I be? Playing basketball was who I was. It was such a big part of my identity. Enter the rugby team. A couple of players walked into our freshman dorm with their cool, long-sleeved polo shirts fresh from tour in another country. 

Sports. Check.

Team. Check.

Playing sports with a team in another country. Check.

I was in. 

Due to Title IX, we were considered a varsity sport, which meant we had access to all the athletic resources that any other sport had. We practiced 5 days a week, had matches on Saturdays both in the Fall and the Spring, a weight-lifting program, access to trainers and athletic support staff, clinics and camps during the off-season, and transportation/food/hotels for away matches. My parents thought I was crazy. But the thing with being 5'2'' and having competed your whole life is you want to continue to prove that you can overcome challenges. Whiplash from hair pulled, cleat marks on my legs, copious black and blues, and my fair share of black eyes, I was tough. However, I wasn't tough enough to avoid the dreaded ACL tear. During the spring of my senior year, I got tackled in an awkward position and could not get my hips to fall in the same direction as my knees. Diagnosis: partial ACL tear. For years, teammates had been dropping like flies to this scary injury which up until this point, I had successfully avoided; this injury, which usually signified your athletic career was over. I wasn't gonna go down like that. Nope, not me. After graduation, I returned home to New York where I did my prehab, then had arthroscopic surgery which removed some scar tissue, and completed my rehab. 

This time playing rugby was enough to make me miss basketball, and for the next six years, I found ways to compete as an adult in various basketball leagues in New York City. I returned to the sport on my terms, without anyone else's motivations. To move my body. Have fun. Compete. Make friends. That was enough. I even coached middle school youth for a few years. Throughout the years of meeting different players, I created a basketball community and would organize pick-up games. It was at one of these pick-up games where on a drive to the hole, my partially torn ACL became a fully torn ACL. 

Enter the self-doubts: Should I give up sports? Am I getting too old? Should I readjust how I look at my athletic regimens and exercise routines? This was more serious now. The first five days being immobile were rough. I had to ask my friends to help me just put on underwear. I couldn't reach. I couldn't bend. Those feelings of helplessness were crippling. When everyone went back to their lives, business as usual, and I was left behind dealing with this injury, I felt abandoned. Trying to get around on crutches or my knee brace in fast-paced NYC, where no one has patience for anyone who can't keep up made me want to cry. "Step aside, sister!" "Get the hell out of the way." And me feeling like please, just have mercy on me. I am fighting so hard just to get to work, just to get to rehab, just to get up my apartment stairs. Many days despair and frustration would take over. I started my rehab and for the next 4 months had a solid routine, however, I lost my health insurance when I started graduate school and had to find another place to continue my rehab. Rehab is a big commitment on top of whatever else you have going on in your life - a job, kids, a partner, social engagements, cleaning your home, taking care of a pet etc. At first, you're super excited to get to a place where you can be mobile again, but at a certain point, you lose patience and want to advance faster than your PT permits, than maybe your body permits. After all, risk of reinjury is a huge fear for us all, but as athletes we are also not used to just sitting still and doing nothing. We train more. We train harder. We practice the same move or play over and over until it’s executed to perfection. Overall, my commitment to training from sports helped me to commit to my rehab. However, there were many times where it felt like drudgery. Once I completed my rehab, it also felt scary to be out there on my own without the support of my physical therapist and his guidance. Any time, I felt an ache or pain in my knee, it worried me. I would convince myself that I needed another MRI to confirm my ACL was still there! Eventually, I returned to sport and got back out on the basketball court. I actually completed my rehab during my first-year of my masters program in social work. Sport had always been a coping mechanism for me and I used my experience to conduct a weekly basketball group for student-veterans to get stuff off their chest while doing something healthy with their bodies.

As I continued to age, it became riskier to play ball with people 2-3 times my size. I started to think about the longevity of my body and how I wanted to preserve it and prevent injury so that way I could have a long life of movement. I began considering alternative and complementary approaches to fitness. I began foam rolling regularly. I took up a yoga and Pilates practice. I began strength training. I got into HIIT workouts so I still felt like I was getting a burn. And of course, I always continued to do my physical therapy exercises for my knee. I reassessed basketball as the mechanism for movement, and decided I would explore other things where I could still be athletic. I took volleyball lessons and went to clinics and open-plays. Then I played in some leagues. (Crazy right? For some reason I have a propensity for sports played by giants.) I also decided to take tennis lessons. I had good footwork from basketball and I could get to balls pretty quickly. I also thought, “Hey, tennis is played by people of all ages. This is something I can do for years to come.”

I would always get to lessons about a half hour early to do a dynamic warmup. Upon my second tennis lesson, we were doing a drill. The instructor was hitting balls to each one of us individually, and we had to hit and place them where he wanted. I have been running to balls and getting into position my whole life. Nothing new. I was ready. However, as I sprinted to the ball this time, I felt someone step on the back of my heel. When I turned around, there was no one behind me. Confused, I fell down on the court. What was probably seconds, felt like a minute in slow motion. Trying to make sense of what just happened, I knew in my soul it was bad. Nothing else made sense. I was positive that I had torn my Achilles tendon. I was in shock. I was in disbelief. How could this happen? I warmed up. I made sure I was feeling strong. It felt so unfair especially as the other people in my class showed up 5 minutes before class or even late and just hopped onto the court. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me! I had taken the preventative precautions! I’m diligent. I’m not careless. WTF?!?!?! Anger came, then sadness followed as I called my family crying. As I waited for the wheelchair to get escorted out of the building, I called orthopedic urgent care secretly hoping and praying they might tell me it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. I arrived an hour later and within two seconds, the doctor confirmed my diagnosis just by looking a the dangling of my foot. Gotta love the efficiency of the Thompson Test.

There’s two parts to dealing with this type of injury. There’s the practical part that needs to do something about it. You’re in pain. You can’t be in physical pain. You need your Achilles to be fixed and so you need to come up with a plan to handle business. You need to Google surgeons, interview them, then have surgery. After surgery, you need to figure out what support you need whether it be medical equipment in the home or a physical person to help you. Find a physical therapist. But there’s the other part of you that is in emotional pain. You’re mourning the loss of your movement, the loss of a body part that will never be the same again. You’re trying to wrap your head around why your body betrayed you. There’s fear, doubt, and uncertainty about the future and the future of your relationship with sports, exercise, and movement. One day you were healthy, fit, and strong, and the next vulnerable, weak, and helpless. For lack of a better word, wrapping your head around this injury is a mindf*ck.

Apparently, when you tear your Achilles, it is advised that you have surgery within two weeks from the date of your injury. I didn’t have much time to spare. Right away, my brain got to work, compartmentalizing my emotions, to handle the task at hand. I interviewed three surgeons and I have zero regrets about that, even saw the one who repaired Kevin Durant’s Achilles, but he wasn’t the man for the job. You need to feel confident in your surgeon. This isn’t about trying to make other people feel comfortable. A good surgeon will not mind that you got a second or third opinion. I ended up having surgery out of HSS in NYC with Dr. Scott Ellis and I’d pick him all over again. No regrets. Phenomenal team. Great, now that my Achilles was reattached came the hard part. My recovery. My time with my thoughts. My time with my feelings. Time feeling incapable and helpless, not being able to do simple tasks. This was the most painful part.

I couldn’t walk/bear weight on my injured leg for two months. I lived up two flights of stairs, my kitchen downstairs, my bedroom upstairs. I scooted up and down the stairs like a baby learning to maneuver them for the first time. I one-legged hopped to and from the bathroom. I wrapped my leg in cellophane for showers and sat on a plastic stool from the 99 Cent Store. I got a minifridge and a microwave and made my office/den into my home base from which I spent many long days on the couch. I had gone through ACL repair, I thought I knew what to expect. I would hit the ground running with my rehab and get back to my old self ASAP. WRONG. An Achilles is totally different. You have to wait. Those two months of non-weight bearing were rough. The helplessness was hitting me hard. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. I tend to be quite independent. But here, I had to learn how to use my words and ask for help. I’m not going to lie. My marriage was tested. At times I also felt abandoned. I was stuck at home but everyone else went on with their life, including going back to their 9-5, leaving me by myself at home vulnerable to try and do tasks that I could no longer do on my own. There were adjustments that needed to be made. New dynamics to learn and roles to be renegotiated.