Her soccer career started off on the right foot. Isabelle Rodriguez went to Pioneer Valley High School, where she was team captain on varisty for four years. Before that, she was playing soccer at the age of 4.
When Rodriguez wasn’t playing for Pioneer, she played for a number of clubs—including one, in Santa Barbara, where she would drive down several times a week for practice after school.
How’d she walk onto varsity and get named captain? “They were looking forward to having me. Freshman year I wasn’t too good,” she hedged modestly. “Then junior year and senior year is when we started to play well.”
Her senior year, she made it far enough to put away two goals and eight assists before she was injured. “I tore my ACL and meniscus,” she explained. It was a 10-month recovery.
Rodriguez was told she would never play again. “I’ve been an athlete for 15 years, I’ve never felt that pain. It was really sharp. My leg felt like a rubber band.”
That night, she said, “it was the size of a soccer ball.” She went to the emergency room. Two doctors told her nothing was wrong with her meniscus; eventually, her physical therapist diagnosed it. Following was a five-hour surgery and eight months of physical therapy.
“I didn’t get to play the rest of my senior year, I didn’t get to play season.” She had two scholarships to go play that she turned down. “So I stayed here and played for Hancock.”
When she was able to play again she was forced to use a big black knee brace. “It holds me back a lot; I don’t like playing with it.” She gets the brace off in about a month and will be able to play again without it.
When she’s not playing soccer, Rodriguez works at Villamaria Care Center. She’s starting an after-school soccer program for little kids. She also is an animal lover. “I like to spend time with my cats,” she smiled. “I have two of them—I saved, them, actually.”
Baking is another one of her hobbies. “I like to make time for myself and do things that I actually like to do,” she said.
At Hancock, Rodriguez is majoring in biology and wants to be an orthopedic surgeon, a nutritonist, or a nurse. “The nurses there take care of people, and I want to do that.”
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2015.