Karisa Price moves her legs effortlessly as she performs some tricks with the soccer ball. Just two years ago, moving her legs wasn't anything but effortless.
"It felt like my legs were literally about to explode, it was awful," she recalls.
Karisa came to Metro State as a promising forward. Until the pain hit.
"Once we had a couple games, I started noticing that my legs weren't quite normal."
She was diagnosed with Compartment syndrome. Basically her lower legs wanted to explode.
"You have fascias that surround the muscles in your legs, and when your muscles try to expand, your fascias don't and that builds up pressure. It never releases, it just keeps building up worse and worse and worse the more you train and the harder you train. Eventually you get to where you just can't train anymore. So what they do is go cut the fascias from top to bottom."
Two years after surgery, it's pretty obvious Karisa followed doctors orders. She leads the Roadrunners with 14 goals on the year and finished the regular season as the top scorer in the RMAC. Hard work pays off.
"After my injury I wasn't sure I was going to come back the same player," says Karisa. "This has just shown me that I'm the same player and I've grown even more than I did before my surgery. So it's kind of a blessing in disguise. I'm thankful for it and now I have another season here."
The Roadrunners host Colorado Mesa in the quarterfinals of the RMAC Tournament on Wednesday, October 31st at noon and earned the No. 3 seed in the postseason.
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