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At the last practice before the final game of the season in late October, Syracuse forward Aysia Cobb collided with a teammate while trying to challenge for the ball and fell to the turf. Less than six weeks after returning to play following a 10-month rehab from a torn ACL in her right knee, Cobb tore the ACL in her left knee.

After partially tearing her ACL near the end of the 2020 season — and unknowingly playing through it — Cobb embarked on a lengthy rehab process that lasted from December until the conclusion of SU’s nonconference play in September. After eight games as a key reserve in 2021, the sophomore forward finally earned her first career start in the penultimate game against NC State. But instead of starting the final game of the season, Cobb spent it on the sidelines in a brace.

Since she began playing soccer at four years-old, Cobb had been warned by strength and conditioning coaches about ACL injuries, specifically in women’s soccer. Women are four to six times more likely than men to tear their ACLs in “cutting” sports like soccer because of differing landing mechanics and anatomy, according to a Wentworth-Douglass Hospital article by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Cullen. Cobb had always thought of tearing her ACL as her “worst nightmare.”

“It always happens to people on your team and you never think it’s going to happen to you, and then it happened,” Cobb said in an interview two days before tearing her left ACL.

During the 2020 season, then-freshman Cobb partially tore the ACL in her right knee. She experienced no severe pain and estimates she played the final two or three games of the season on it. But at the start of the offseason, the pain she had played through worsened and she received an MRI.

Right before Thanksgiving break, Cobb heard the results — a torn ACL. She walked home, sat on her bed and cried. In mid-December, Cobb underwent surgery to repair her right knee using a quadricep graft, a method that led to a longer recovery but didn’t involve weakening her knee or causing potential long-term knee pain. She began rehabbing her knee at home during SU’s nearly three-month long winter break.

At first, Cobb faced difficulties — both physical and mental. ” Cobb Googled “quad graft where should I be now” and would constantly compare her slow progress against others who were farther along in their recovery. While others at her physical therapy clinic were moving on to harder and harder rehab exercises, she could barely do a straight leg raise.

For the first time in her life, Cobb couldn’t participate in athletics and couldn’t even walk without assistance. Without soccer, Cobb’s focus shifted to school and other hobbies. She learned to knit, practiced baking and chose a major.

“(Cobb gained) awareness of understanding identification of who you are beyond the sport,” Cobb’s mother Marisa Schwartz said. “A lot of athletes have to take that time because that’s all they can remember is their sport. They forget that they’re a person too.”

After weeks of rehab, Cobb slowly began to make progress. In her rehab sessions at her home in Florida, Cobb worked with physical therapist Dewey Joern on restoring motion in her knee and strengthening her leg. She did standing exercises, squats and lunges. Six weeks after her surgery, she walked unassisted for the first time.

When she arrived back in Syracuse for spring practices this year, Cobb was an outsider for the first time in her soccer career. In addition to watching practice for the first time, Cobb delved into studying film. In her film study, she discovered cues from her teammates, such as dipping their head and planting their feet differently when delivering long balls. She also learned how to study her opponents and recognize their habits for when she could take the field again.

Morgan Sample | Design Editor

“(Film) helps going back in,” Cobb said. “It’s already uncomfortable coming back from something like this, so having those small things like ‘OK, when they do this, this is what’s going to happen,’ then you’d already be prepared for that.”

Cobb had progressed to jogging and low-level jumping when she returned to Florida for summer break and more rehab with Joern. For eight weeks, Cobb worked two times a week with Joern’s student Shannon Mulvey, a former college soccer player at St. Joseph’s and professional club Le Havre in France.

Mulvey and Joern focused on single-leg activities throughout the summer to load Cobb’s quad and hamstrings. She did split squats, elevated lunges and knee extensions. She practiced her landing mechanics by jumping off boxes and using a band to help with control once she hit the ground.

Mulvey also focused on involving a soccer ball in Cobb’s rehab and pushed her to touch a ball every session. It was important to integrate rehab techniques that she cared about, and soccer-type drills were the best way to do this, Mulvey said.

“It keeps the patient more interested. Definitely with her, soccer is everything, so it’s really great to have the ball there,” Mulvey said.

Finally, Cobb was cleared for non-contact practice in the weeks preceding the team’s preseason session. At the start of September, Cobb was cleared for contact practice, and on Sept. 18, she made her season debut against Notre Dame. A mix of happy and scared, Cobb came off the bench and almost immediately got into a tackle with her repaired right leg.

“I didn’t realize until afterwards, and then I was like, ‘Oh my gosh it’s fine,’” Cobb said.

In Cobb’s first start, Schwartz said she finally saw her daughter at 100%, making plays she wouldn’t have made before her injury.

Three days later, she tore the ACL in her left knee. Joern admitted that her second rehab process will take longer than the first one, but he’s confident in her ability to progress through rehab again and be an even better player, now that she knows what the process entails.

“Once it all comes back, I just feel like I’ll be someone I didn’t know I could be,” Cobb said.

Published on December 1, 2021 at 11:47 pm

Contact Connor: cpignate@syr.edu