The ACL Club

By Alison Korn, The Ottawa Citizen

On any given day at the Carleton University Sports Medicine Clinic, members of the “ACL club” — female athletes with painful knee-ligament tears — comfort one another as they plow through arduous, post-surgery physiotherapy.

These varsity athletes represent several of Carleton’s women’s sports teams — basketball, soccer, hockey — but they have one thing in common: They’ve all ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in one of their knees.

What’s worse, they are part of a persistent trend that sees young female athletes injure their ACL at rates two to eight times the rate suffered by males.

“It was our support group,” recalls Klassen, who underwent rehabilitation for six months following surgery in May 2007 to repair an ACL tear in her left knee. “Three of us would sometimes be in there together and we talked about (the injury) most of the time. We kind of had to. It influences every single aspect of your life.”

The ACL is a five-centimetre band of ropy white connective tissue extending from the back of the thigh bone to the front of the shin bone through the middle of the knee. It prevents the knee from hyperextending and over-rotating.

Tearing an ACL can derail an athlete’s season, as well as athletic scholarships, eligibility, and chance to play.

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