Liberty's dynamic Alvidrez effective as ever after recovery from knee injury
| Thursday, Jan 15 2009 01:16 AM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 01:41 PM
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Mariah Alvidrez leads the powerful Liberty girls soccer team.
Liberty soccer player Mariah Alvidrez
The popcaused a lot of grief.
It took away a season from one of Kern County's best girls soccer players, it shattered her knee and her confidence and it gave her a boatload of pain and extra work that she didn't deserve.
But, in retrospect, the pop also did some wonderful things.
The popcame when Liberty's Mariah Alvidrez was running alongside a Fresno-Bullard player in December 2007 and the two collided, hyper-extending Alvidrez's right knee. The pop was the all-too-familiar anterior crucial ligament, and the consequences were immediate.
"It was probably the most painful feeling I've ever felt, doing anything," Alvidrez said. "And the ride to the hospital, any little move made my knee hurt that much more. I settled down, and everything was, well not good, but better. Everything after that was really long, hard and painful."
The ACL tear is a common injury, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear, especially when you're Alvidrez, who was seven games into her sophomore at the time excelling at both soccer and volleyball on the club and high school levels.
"When it happened, we all didn't know what had happened," said teammate Darci Smith. "We were just all thinking, 'Aw, she'll be back in a couple games.' And then we found out she was gonna be gone for the whole year. We were already looking forward to the next year when we could get her back."
It wasn't so easy for Alvidrez. There hadn't been a week since the age of 4 during which she hadn't visited a soccer field, and now she had to watch.
"I couldn't do anything," Alvidrez said. "I was wanting to do things, and they were telling me I physically can't.
"... Girls would say, 'Oh, at least we won, or we didn't lose,' and it would just drive me insane. It's like, 'You're just taking that for granted.' You don't know how hard it is to just sit there."
But sometimes, from bad things come good ones: the week without being able to lift her leg was hard for Alvidrez, and the 71⁄2 months of rehabilitation were harder.
But on that late July day when she stepped back onto the court for her club volleyball team, it was worth it.
"It was very important to me to get back to how I was," said Alvidrez, now a junior. "... It was a bit scary at first, but I had to get that out of my head. It was great."
That feeling intensified as volleyball season progressed — Alvidrez was widely considered one of the area's two best players, and Liberty reached the Division I Central Section championship — and as soccer season started.
"It was probably my best (volleyball) season ever," Alvidrez said. "I think being hurt made me realize the things people take for granted, and I'm obviously not going to do that again."
Now, instead of watching, she's shed a bulky knee brace for a smaller one, and she's scored 13 goals even as she's bought into new coach Lorne Howlett's defense-first system. Liberty is unbeaten in the Southeast Yosemite League and is a bona fide contender for the Division I section title. The Patriots are the only team to knock off three-time defending champion Clovis-Buchanan this year.
"She's doing a really good job of playing within the system," Howlett said of Alvidrez, who was a first-team CalifornianAll-Area selection as a freshman, when she scored 27 goals. "I'm asking her to do things she hasn't been asked to do by other coaches. She's just a great finisher. You put balls on her head, she'll head the ball in; you put balls on her feet, she'll put it in. She's a real goal-scorer."
There are still setbacks — Alvidrez said she was so worried after her first post-injury collision during club soccer that it brought her to tears — but she said her family support has been everything she could ask for, and she's gradually learning her rebuilt knee can do about anything her old one can.
"She was working out every day, getting prepared to come back," Smith said. "She's doing even better this year."
And for that, the pop is to blame and the pop is to thank.
"Of course I enjoy it more now," Alvidrez said. "I've had it taken away from me."
