.png?v=1716195554){kind=logo}
Kate Harman, FOR THE INQUIRER
Posted: Sunday, January 13, 2013, 9:35 PM
A three-sport athlete at Lower Merion, the senior suffered a knee injury in the fourth game of the Aces’ soccer season. An MRI exam revealed a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
“I was beside myself,” Daly said. “I heard a pop and had that feeling in my stomach. It was so hard.”
An athlete all her life, Daly wasn’t sure how she was going to fill her time without sports.
Then it came time for surgery in mid-October – and the unexpected happened.
Awake for the entire procedure, Daly watched as the surgeon cleaned the meniscus and went to repair the anterior cruciate ligament. Instead, the doctor told her that the ligament was a bit stretched but wasn’t torn.
Daly could not believe her luck. She knew that with a lot of rehabilitation and strengthening exercises, she could heal the torn cartilage and sprained medial collateral ligament and would be ready for basketball season.
One of the first texts Daly sent after her surgery was to her basketball coach, Lauren Pellicane, who remembers that the text was in all capital letters and embellished with exclamation points.
“She’s the type of kid that doesn’t know how not to compete,” Pellicane said. “She’ll run through the wall for you. I am so happy that she has the ability to come back. As a coach, you love to coach kids like that.”
Although the rehab took longer than she expected, Daly, a forward, is back on the basketball court for Lower Merion. She is wearing a bulky knee brace, but she’s back.
“There is so much youth on our team, someone needed to lead, and it was frustrating to sit on the bench and not do anything to help them,” Daly said of the team’s early season struggles.
Back on the court for just a week, Daly hit a roadblock when she tweaked her knee at practice. She sat out a few days but was able to play on Saturday.
“I wasn’t worried,” Daly said. “I know it is going to happen, and now it is just a kind of walk-it-off thing.”
Also a lacrosse standout, Daly plans to play in the spring and hopes that wherever she chooses to go to college she will be able to walk on to the team.
She is one of three seniors trying to help the Aces string together some wins to make their mark in the Central League.
“You have the younger kids that look up to her as a leader. She’s our most vocal leader,” Pellicane said. “She also brings that energy that is contagious.”
So far, that contagious energy is having a positive effect on the rest of the Lower Merion squad.
In Daly’s first game back since tweaking her knee last week, the Aces beat Chester, 23-21, on a buzzer-beater.
Processing your request, Please wait....
