LA JOLLA, Calif. – On Oct. 19, with 12 minutes left in the first half of UC San Diego's match against CSUN, Emily Killeen substituted on for midfielder Lindsey Park. Her corner kick that floated to the back post, was an ordinary, if not unassuming, first touch of the game for the graduate student.
 
What led to this kick, however, was more than a year in the making, and would require unprecedented perseverance and grit from an individual who would not accept an end to her UC San Diego career without stepping back onto the pitch one last time.
 
Keeping Killeen from the pitch for so long would be consecutive knee injuries in her third and fifth years. The first — a torn ACL occurring after an opponent ran through her left knee in the team's first Spring game — sidelined Killeen for the rest of the season, with the surgery holding her back through her senior season.
 
"[I had a] partially torn ACL, was it partial? Whatever, it needed surgery," Killeen said.
 
Determined to get back on the pitch, Killeen continued playing for the Tritons as a graduate student. This resolve paid off for the Temecula native, who played her first minutes against Northern Arizona after over a year.
 
Unfortunately, this triumph was fleeting. In the very next game against San Diego State, Killeen's right knee became the issue.
 
"Through all the rehab that I did with my ACL, I had overdeveloped my quad so my quad was too strong for what my right leg could basically handle," Killeen said. "So I took too big of a step or too hard of a step in the State game…So my femur hit the patella and it ripped off cartilage off of both bones."
 
This setback proved more severe than her first knee injury, requiring painful surgery where four holes had to be drilled in her femur. The debilitating rehab that followed lasted for the next year. Biweekly trips to and from Spanos Athletic Performance Center and the Pepper Canyon apartments in a straight-leg brace and crutches were a constant reminder of her long road to recovery.
 
"It felt like there was just a knife shoved in my knee. I can't even explain it. Just awful," Killeen said.
 
Further complicating matters was Killeen's structural engineering major coursework that kept her from relaxing her mind while her body rested. Following in the footsteps of her brother, who also attended UC San Diego for structural engineering, Killeen has kept busy with load calculations and designs.
 
"It's tough," Killeen said. "I don't know how much time I've spent doing school work while other friends in other majors are just going out and just doing whatever they want."
 
The work is rewarding, however, for Killeen, who boasts a "sick" 200-page steel book filled with notes. The professors are another plus for Killeen, who has given Chia-Ming Uang and Jose I. Restrepo top marks.
 
"I don't think I would like concrete as much as I do if it wasn't for Restrepo," Killeen said.
 
Killeen's academic fervor landed her an intern position at TYLin, a global structural engineering firm responsible for iconic structures like the Harbor Drive Bridge in downtown San Diego. Currently in the bridge division, Killeen has already been tasked with real-world designs, such as a railing for a pedestrian bridge in Las Vegas.
 
"If I saw myself potentially getting this when I came in as a freshman, I'd be like 'Oh my god, I made it,'" Killeen said.
 
While her off-the-field successes are superb, Killeen continued to struggle on the athletic front. Even after the straight-leg brace was removed in February, typically an indicator of a final push in getting back onto the field, Killeen continued to experience unbearable pain when putting weight on her right leg, let alone bending her knee. From February to June, UC San Diego's athletic trainers worked to figure out the issue, coming up empty.
 
"Once we hit February, and I couldn't go on the AlterG®, or at least that was really painful, that's when the return date just kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back…It's so frustrating and mentally taxing."
 

In these hard times, Killeen's determination to carry on was a familiar one: to make her parents proud. While they never forced her to continue, a football-heavy upbringing watching her favorite Chelsea FC instilled a love for the game that saw her kicking from the age of four; abandoning the sport was simply not an option.
 
It was only when she went under the knife for a second time this past July that true progress emerged. The removal of a fat pad in her knee miraculously took a significant amount of pain away, prompting some baffled expletives from Killeen as she walked more regularly for the first time in almost a year.
 
With just 10 days until preseason matches began and her chance to play closing in, Killeen took the fast track to recovery, foregoing the Alter-G® and working her way up to build her strength instead. Her regimen was progressive, ranging from skips on the track to dribbles and jogging to longer strides and sprinting. Killeen's tenacity was evident as she finished this 12-week program in 4 weeks.
 
This training was not easy. Killeen continued to struggle and began to grapple with leaving the team after a rehab buddy, who had hit a similar wall in recovery, did so in July. Concerns about an age gap also lingered for the sixth-year, who was joining a team with 10 freshmen and just 1 other graduate student.
 
"I was like 'what am I doing here? Like, what are the odds that I'm actually gonna be able to play again?'" Killeen said. "But I just never really thought about quitting. It's not really wired in me."
 
Killeen added about the age gap: "I just didn't feel like I belonged on the team anymore…[But] I kind of found my place in the team again…They are like family, and I'm gonna miss those girls, I love them all. That's what's kept me here for six years."
 
Her decision to stay paid off. By the end of September, she was cleared to practice, and by early October, deemed game-ready.
 
"To be able to run was something I wouldn't have thought of 6 months ago," Killeen said.
 
And so returning to the opening lines of this article, three months after her July surgery and 410 days since the last time she donned a Triton uniform, Emily Killeen fulfilled her promise. Her sprint to the corner flag was one of unfamiliar yet welcomed tranquility, and out of the raucous applause of many Triton fans, one stood out.
 
"I heard my dad screaming…It was just good to hear."
 

About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program began a new era in 2020 as a member of The Big West in NCAA Division I. The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. A total of 84 Tritons have earned Academic All-America honors, while 38 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 90 percent, the highest rate among public institutions in Divisions I and II.