Toby Brooks

When you were growing up, what did you want to be and what did you believe that that version of you could prove?

So you end up at Illinois where you are a college soccer player, Big Ten.

I mean, obviously at a big stage.

How much would you say your identity was tied into being an athlete at that point?

And who were you if that were to go away?

I've worked with a lot of athletes, not a lot in soccer, but definitely in college sports.

Soccer, I think, is unique in that it almost seems like until an athlete gets her first ACL tear, like she's not really trying very hard.

It's almost like enculturated as part of the sport, right?

So from my background and research, it looks like you've had injuries from early teen years and really that magnified as you got into college.

So talk me through maybe that first experience

taste of adversity and what it was like early on in the process and what your thought process was like those initial few injuries.

Let's hop right in here and learn some things together, friends.

The condition Sarah referred to, plica syndrome, can be very painful, not to mention somewhat difficult to diagnose.

If you think of the joint capsule of the knee as a type of wrapper that surrounds and protects and supports and helps the articular surfaces of the bones stay lubricated and nourished with synovial fluid, then the plica are like small folds or pleats of that tissue.

And they're present all the way back to our earliest development, even embryonically.

Heavy activity, like we see in competitive athletes, can result in an irritation, where those folds can override one another or the condyles of the femur, but they become inflamed.

And it's usually activity mediated, which means the more you do, the worse it gets.

But when you rest, it gets better, which is maddening for a competitive athlete.

So the problem is when you resume training, once you start to feel better, it gets aggravated all over again.

So it makes for this vicious cycle.