Coach would always tell me how great the connection was between Wabash Alumni and current Wabash students. He said it quite often during recruiting process. I never thought that I would be able to see this connection first hand, even before I set foot in a Wabash classroom or on the soccer pitch.

            Mid-summer, I was in the middle of my Club soccer season, with State Cup only 1 week away. My team was shaping up nicely and it looked like we could make a serious run at State. It was a Saturday and we were playing a friendly match against the team we would likely face second round of State Cup. I was feeling great this game, I felt as if my timing and everything was fitting together. A long ball off a free kick went sailing toward about the twelve, and I yelled keeper and jumped up to grab the ball. I had the ball but landed my right foot in a rut on the field. My ankle rolled very hard but I knew that it was nothing more then a bad sprain. My coach came to me and asked me how I was, and I replied I could still play. With every movement I made my right ankle would kill, and  I began to limp and over-compensate for my ankle by putting most of my weight on my left leg, After fifteen more minutes of play I felt my left leg begin to become tight. I had the ball and threw it down the field to my midfielder, and in the process heard a pop in my left leg. The pain was so sharp that I fell to the ground. When I got up to play again - the pain was terrible. At half my coach decided to not have me continue, so I could rest for next week, and we were winning. The days to follow consisted of hours of icing on both my very swollen ankle and what the Sports Clinic called “something” pulled around my knee.

 I practiced a very light practice on Thursday and found out that it was very difficult to move laterally or any sharp movement on my knee. State cup came and I played. It was the most painful experience I have ever had. Every time I made a save or threw the ball, I heard a pop and I felt like my knee was going to buckle and split in two. I tried punting only once during the game and landed on my butt, because my knee gave out. I played for the first ninety minutes of the game and since we were still tied we went into over time. I could not take the pain any longer. For the first time in my soccer career I watched from the sidelines. We ended up losing in penalty kicks, and that was the last soccer I have played.

Monday I went to the doctor in Champaign and he took fluid from my knee and said I had a meniscus tear. Surgery followed on Tuesday and he took out most of my meniscus. When I woke up from the surgery, the doctor said that my ACL was completely ruptured. He thought it was probably torn sometime during my High School soccer season. I was completely blown away.

 I called Coach Giannini right away and I was so glad to hear him begin to try to figure out when I could get back on the field. He also immediately told me about Dr. Shelbourne’s ACL Clinic in Indianapolis. He told me that Dr. Shelbourne graduated from Wabash and that his office would be calling me that very day. Indeed they did - the nurse called me and we set up an appointment for the following week. I met with the doctors and they were amazed at the amount of swelling and the lack of motion I had in the knee. They took me to the physical therapy room and I began to do exercises that helped with the straightening of my knee. They put me in what I would later call “the torture board” which basically forces my knee to hyperextend thus stretching the ligament in the back of the knee that has grown to be short. I stayed in the board for twelve minutes and it was very painful.

On July 11, I had ACL surgery at the Methodist Hospital. Dr. Urich, from theShelbourne Clinic, did the operation. The first week of recovery and exercises was absolutely grueling. I had to stay flat on my back except to go to the bathroom.

It is 1 month from the ACL operation. I am doing a bunch of physical therapy daily and will try to get back for some of the soccer season.

-Mike Scheitlin, Class of 2011