Strength and speed define East Lake senior soccer standout Lauren Dodge.
“Speed is crucial,” said Lauren’s club coach Eddie Rodriguez. “That is something she brings to the table on our team.”
“If someone gets by someone or someone passes around me I can quickly get back and take the ball away from them,” said Dodge, who has worked her way into Rodriguez’s starting lineup.
Her Tampa Bay United U18 squad is in the midst of a State Cup run. She is a fearless defender, even though she has so many reasons to be afraid.
“Soccer’s always been a part of me,” said Dodge. “I’m not gonna throw it away because of some injury.”
Dodge will never forget February 12, 2012.
“I was playing up in Atlanta and I went to go plant and the outside of my leg muscle, my quad, just ripped my growth plate right off my tibia,” said Dodge.
“She goes in for a tackle, probably that she’s done since she was four and doesn’t stand up,” said Lauren’s father David Dodge.
Lauren was rushed from her tournament game to not one, but two hospitals.
“I was in a lot of pain and they gave me some shots, but they couldn’t reset my leg at the first hospital,” said Dodge. “So we ended up having to be transported to another one.”
“They didn’t want to do anything with it because it was at the growth plate,” said David Dodge. “So, they wanted to transfer us to a pediatric specialist.”
A day after Lauren’s surgery things took a turn for the worse.
“She started screaming in pain and that’s when they found the compartment syndrome,” said David Dodge. “They had the cut the cast off and emergency test and then the surgery after that.”
Lauren underwent three more operations back to back to fix the compartment syndrome. It is a condition where excessive pressure builds up inside an enclosed space in the body. If they hadn’t already been at the hospital there could have been catastrophic consequences.
“They said I might have lost my leg if we waited any longer, so it was a lot,” said Dodge.
“The swelling crushes everything in sides,” said David Dodge. “All the nerves, ligaments and tendons and everything and she still has a dead spot on the top of her foot where she has no feeling.”
Forget about playing. Lauren’s long road to recovery started with relearning how to walk.
“The first couple weeks of physical therapy, when I was trying to learn how to walk again, it felt like my leg wasn’t even there,” said Dodge. “That was probably a really bad, low time.”
“Just pick her up and move her from the wheelchair to the couch,” said David Dodge. “Back to the wheelchair to the bed. Lift her up, sit her in bed.”
“It made me feel like maybe I can’t come back,” said Dodge. “They said I was only supposed to be in a wheelchair for two weeks and I was in there for four months. Maybe this was a lot worse than I thought it’d be.”
Doubt soon turned into determination. To walk. To Play. To play better than ever. After a year of perseverance, Lauren stepped back on the field. Three years later she doesn’t even think about her injury while playing.
“It doesn’t ever cross my mind until someone looks at it or points at it and says ‘Oh my God! Are you okay?’” said Dodge.
“If you don’t see her scar, if you’re a coach watching her from the outside, you would never know she not only had an injury, but such a drastic injury as well,” said Rodriguez. “She was pretty sure she wanted to make a comeback and for her to make a comeback of this magnitude it speak volumes of her character as well.”
So what comes to mind when she looks down at her scar now?
“How much I’ve been through and kinda thinking of all the people who said I couldn’t do it (rehab),” said Dodge.
She runs her fingers over her scar and reflects on how different things might have been without her fast-acting doctors in Atlanta.
She is left with a scar, but it is a constant reminder to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Her comeback is complete. Lauren will play college soccer at Division II Mississippi College in the fall. The same school her older sister Megan attends.