The two-inch vertical scar over her right kneecap is permanent. But to her, it's not a reminder of pain, but of perseverance through persistence.
The upstart West Islip girls soccer team is off to a 6-2 start, and atop their scoring tally is junior Codi-Lyn Johnson. The 5’3” speedster has been able to weave through defenses, change direction on a dime and, of course, kick with accuracy. When she scored the game-winning goal in a 2-1 overtime contest against league-rival Centereach on Sept. 18, it seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d suffered a severed ACL.
But rewind to November 2005. There was the 13-year-old, writhing in pain while laying on the grass, in tears, and clutching her knee.
“I was running on a breakaway and my knee just cracked,” said Johnson, recalling the Waldbaum’s Cup game with her East Meadow travel team. “I was just running and the leg gave out. I didn’t slip or anything. I didn’t know what happened.”
She didn’t, and neither did the trainer. Johnson, with the help of her coach, was able to walk to the bench. It didn’t look that serious, so after icing the knee until it felt numb, she returned to the field. After all, it was a single-elimination tournament match against Northport and her team only led 1-0. “I thought it was just a bruise or something,” she said.
But shortly thereafter, she heard the notorious pop; a sound that's become all too common in sports. What happened was a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament. The kind of injury that has transmuted the careers of many athletes, and ruined those of several others.
“The pop was really loud,” Johnson remembered. “You could probably hear it from the other side of the field. I was scared. I’d never felt any pain as bad in my life.”
That was just the beginning. What followed for the eighth-grader was a daunting rehabilitation process.
Johnson would have to wait six months until her growth plates closed before having the operation to transplant muscle and cartilage from her thigh to the knee.
“She cried all the time,” said Anne Johnson, her mother. “And seeing pictures of where they made the cuts, I would cry with her. I’d feel the pain in my knee.”
The surgery downed her for a year, eight months of which were spent going through grueling rounds of physical therapy. Three times each week, there were leg bends with restrictive bands, weight training, treadmill work and sessions with electric stimulation pads.
All that at 13.
The injury stole a bulk of her first high school season and much of the typically-bubbly teenager’s effervescence. She wasn’t able to hang out with friends much, she said, and the three months on crutches weren’t pleasant.
It’s part of the season she rushed back to the field as soon as possible – prematurely, she confessed.
“I went back before I was supposed to for ninth grade,” she said. “It hurt when I did certain movements, like stopping short or cutting one way. But I got through it.”
She did. And through her sophomore year, there was more recuperation (the injury normally takes 18 months for a complete recovery) and the melioration of skills diminished in the time off. By the end of the season, though, she was able to “turn it up full crank.”
Fast-forward to the present. The knee, according to Johnson, is at about 95 percent and she needs only to stretch it before running and ice it down after some games.
"She hasn't shown any ill effects of it," said West Islip coach Nick Grieco. "Some people become hesitant in their play after serious injuries, but the way she moves, she hasn't lost any aggression."
Johnson scored her first varsity goal in a 2-0 win over Half Hollow Hills East in the Lions' League III opener and is having a breakout season on a burgeoning, breakout team.
“It’s awesome watching her play,” Anne said. “Her moves are pretty. It’s a big accomplishment. I know I couldn’t have done it. I’d have been like, ‘Forget it. Give me a wheelchair.’ It’s a tough game and there's a lot of contact. She’s had her share of bumps, but you’d never know she had surgery.”
Unless you’ve seen the scar. It used to be covered by a kneepad, but Johnson has done away with that.
“It was sort of a way of letting people know that I had the knee problem,” Johnson said of the protective pad, “but after a while I threw it off because it was slowing me down.”