NEW PALESTINE — Just a few weeks into the 2017 girls soccer season, Jordan Reid watched one of her best friends collide with an oncoming goalie.
The Sept. 2 collision left Victoria Crowder on the ground. Crowder heard a pop and was helped off the field but felt OK. After waiting a few minutes, she went back into the game against Franklin Central.
She lasted less than a minute before collapsing and being carried off again.
Crowder quickly would be diagnosed with a torn ACL and partial meniscus tear. Reid, devastated by her friend’s injury, thought that would be the worst the New Palestine Dragons would experience last season.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
“When I saw her fall, I didn’t want to believe it,” Reid said. “Once she went to the hospital, I thought ‘This is actually happening right now. How could this happen to such a strong player like her?’ I started thinking this would never happen to me, this can’t happen to me.”
She was wrong.
Exactly one week later, Sept. 9 against Roncalli, Reid was looking for a shot near the end of a tie game. Just like the previous Saturday, the goalie rushed out. A defender converged.
A bad collision sent Reid to the ground. She didn’t hear a pop or snap, as Crowder had the week before. She didn’t feel pain. But she was worried.
“My first thought was ACL tear, Victoria,” Reid said. “And then I thought, ‘Heck no, this isn’t happening.’”
Crowder was there watching from the sidelines as her friend went to the ground. She was concerned but hopeful because of the differences Reid experienced immediately following her collision.
Despite the differences in the injuries — the pain levels, an audible pop, the immediate feeling in each of their knees — the end result was nearly the same.
Reid, like her friend, had torn her ACL.
A few weeks later, in early October, Crowder had surgery, performed by Dr. K. Donald Shelbourne of Shelbourne Knee Center in Indianapolis.
A few days later, Reid also had surgery with Shelbourne.
“I tried to keep them positive with how the surgery was going to go,” New Palestine girls soccer coach Gina Fannin said. “I’d been through it myself, same doctor and everything. I tried to keep them reassured that it was just a minor setback.”
Their recoveries were wildly different. One of the friends had several big setbacks.
Staying positive wasn’t always easy for the two, who have been teammates and friends for several years, since Reid was in seventh grade and Crowder in eighth. But the path back to strength and health led deep into the state track and field tournament this spring.
Reid, then a sophomore, advanced to the regional round and fell just short of state.
Crowder, then a junior, made it all the way back to state, just over seven months after her surgery.
Paths diverge
The surgeries went well for both girls, and each felt good for the first day after the surgery.
Crowder said she pushed herself too hard the day after surgery, walking around the house too much. Her friends who were visiting warned her that she should take it easy. Her next day was “awful, I could barely move,” but from there things started to head the right direction, she said.
Reid said she felt fine the first day after her surgery, too.
That was where the paths the two took on the road to recovery diverged.
Unable to stand up without getting dizzy or falling down in the days after the surgery, Reid quickly became sick. She had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia or the medicine, causing her to be unable to keep food down during the week of bed rest following surgery.
She lost almost 20 pounds quickly. She wasn’t able to do any of the therapy or exercises she was given to start the process of rebuilding the strength in her knee. It was, as Reid said, “the worst week of my life.”
While her friend was struggling, Crowder was pushing through following surgery. She was told that, with an ACL surgery in October, she probably wouldn’t be back to full strength in time for the spring track season.
She took that as serious motivation.
“I was determined and very motivated,” Crowder said. “My trainers told me I wouldn’t be back to full speed, and I just didn’t like to hear that. I wanted to prove them wrong.”
Crowder said she didn’t really experience any setbacks during her recovery. Things went smoothly and faster than some anticipated.
Reid’s struggles in her ACL recovery had just begun.
Major setback
It took Reid a few weeks to return to school following surgery, and her first day back was Halloween.
She could tell something was not healing correctly in her knee. At a followup doctor’s appointment that week, an infection specialist was brought in.
One day later, Reid was having a procedure performed on her knee again to clean it out. Bacteria had formed around the surgery site, something that happens in a small percentage of people who have that particular type of ACL surgery, where the patellar tendon from the healthy knee is used to help reconstruct the ACL.
There were two choices of medication following the second procedure. Reid could either take two very large pills every day, or have a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC line) put in.
She was tired of needles and shots. Reid opted for the pills.
Within days, she had a bad allergic reaction to that medication, too. Doctors had to insert a midline catheter in her right arm.
After her attempts at avoiding more needles didn’t work, Reid was left with an IV in her arm for 44 days, slowing her recovery even more and making it more difficult to build her health and strength back.
“From when I saw Jordan in December, she did not look like someone who was going to be able to compete this year,” New Palestine girls track and field coach Chuck Myers said. “She had lost a decent amount of weight, and I really expected her not to be able to compete.”
Back on track?
When the New Palestine track team opened its season April 6, Crowder was back in the lineup nearing full strength.
She didn’t just compete — she helped the Dragons win the tri-meet with victories in the 4×400 and 4×800 relays.
With her setbacks in October and November, Reid still was several weeks away from an attempted comeback.
“It was heartbreaking,” Crowder said. “She’s such a great friend, such a great athlete. She deserves everything. It was heartbreaking because she should be here with me instead of there.”
At the Franklin Relays on April 20, Reid made her season debut. Her coaches and trainers had decided she was getting stronger, getting closer to full strength, so the decision was made to test her knee in the event.
Reid, nervous, took the baton with the lead in her first race back. She was pulling away and looked to be on the way to a triumphant return in the 4×100.
Then the wheels fell off.
“All of a sudden I just felt myself leaning down, and I kind of slow-motion fell down and tucked and rolled,” Reid said.
“By the time her mother and I ran down the stairs, she got up and made it across the finish line,” Dale Reid, Jordan’s father, said. “She told us that everything was OK and her knees were fine. So reluctantly we let her run in her last race.”
That race was the sprint medley, where Reid, covered in scrapes from her fall, ran the third leg, the 200 meters. She fittingly handed the baton to Crowder for the last leg, the 400 meters. The Dragons won.
Not all was well, though.
The fall in the 4×100 was a concern. It led Reid’s parents, coaches and trainers to shut her down for the rest of the season.
“I was mad,” Reid said. “I was mad at him. I was mad at the coaches. I was mad at my trainer. I just wanted another shot. I was mad at myself because I wasn’t healing properly.”
Surprising return
Even though it looked like her track season had ended after just one meet, Reid tried to stay positive.
She saw her friend continue having success, both with her recovery and in the track season. It was hard not to get a little down.
Crowder noticed and, approaching full strength herself, tried to help keep Reid upbeat and reassured.
“I was proud of her for having such a great recovery,” Reid said of Crowder. “Just seeing what I could be at, and watching her just beast it out out there, I’m not going to lie, I got a little jealous. I was happy for her, but was also like, ‘Why isn’t that me?’”
A few weeks later it was. Dale Reid, after seeing the work his daughter was putting in at physical therapy and with the track team in practices, surprised her by allowing her to run on her birthday, May 9, in the Hoosier Heritage Conference meet.
Reid thought it was a one-time thing. It turned out to be her official return to the team full-time, and she made the most of it. Reid and Crowder helped lead the Dragons to a conference championship, each winning several events.
That momentum carried on. With Crowder finally nearing full-strength — she said it took until regional or maybe state to finally get there — and Reid back in the mix, the Dragons got a boost heading into sectional.
“It helped the team a lot, but (Jordan) was there all season supporting them anyway,” Myers said. “Just having her back as a competitor really did help and her teammates were very supportive. Getting her back at that time was nice. It really helped down the stretch to have someone with that kind of experience come back and be able to compete.”
A week later, both advanced through sectionals and into the regional round of the state tournament. Reid took her return as an opportunity to prove herself, to prove that she was back.
At the regional meet, Reid finished eighth in the 200 meters and fifth in the 4×100, just missing the state cut. Crowder advanced to state in the 4×400 and 4×800 relays, eventually helping those teams finish 19th and 14th respectively in the state meet.
Both said they were happy with the successes but still were disappointed with their times throughout the season, frustrated that they weren’t where they wanted to be or where they were in the 2017 track season.
But they made it back, and though it took some twists and turns, finally, they were out there competing together again.
Next steps
Since shortly after the track season ended, Reid has been playing AAU basketball this summer. She’s feeling mostly confident in her knee, but still isn’t quite where she wants to be. Basketball and track are her main future focus, so she reluctantly left the soccer team to focus on those sports for her upcoming junior year.
Crowder was named a team captain for her senior year of soccer and also has picked up cross-country for a second fall sport.
After supporting one another through such similar-yet-different experiences, the two plan to team up again next spring for what they hope is a big season for the Dragons track team.
“I don’t know if I could be as strong by myself,” Crowder said. “It was cool to have that support system. It was nice to know that someone else knew exactly what I was feeling.”
“We were actually planning before our surgeries that we were going to stay on bed rest together and have sleepovers together,” Reid added. “It was definitely reassuring knowing that one of my best friends knows what I’m going through mentally and physically. It was just emotionally good for us to have each other.”