Knee injuries have crushed the dreams of many soccer hopefuls throughout the years. Not Kierstin Clark’s.
After months upon months of hard work on and off the field, the Hilton Head Prep star triumphed through the pain and earned an offer to play at Cleveland State University.
Even with the astounding success of overcoming multiple setbacks to reach the next level of her sport, she will miss what would have first come this spring. Losing her senior season at Hilton Head Prep, a place where she has spent nearly the entirety of her childhood, is just unfair to such a warrior like Clark.
Soccer was her sport from the very beginning. She started her journey on the pitch at age 4, and took to the many leagues at the Island Rec Center, soon finding out that this was her game. And she excelled at it as the years went along, building her skills and quickly moving up the club ranks. Clark participated in the Tormenta training program for more than three years before joining Global Premier Soccer. She rose to become one of the top students in the academy and was the only girl in the state named to the GPS national team, receiving the opportunity to travel to England and play the Arsenal and Tottenham junior squads, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
After an exceptional freshman season at Hilton Head Prep, Clark was named to the SCISA All-Region squad, and everything was looking up for her to continue a sensational career. But in October of her sophomore year, she dislocated her knee and was in and out of soccer for the next several months. It was just the first tough setback for the Hilton Head Prep standout.
Near December of her junior year, Clark was preparing for a massive college showcase event with more than half a dozen coaches in attendance. But just before she was all set to show off her hard work to coaches with the hopes of landing some big offers, her knee dislocated again. The injury bug struck once more at seemingly the worst possible time.
Clark missed eight months of time on the pitch after a surgery at the end of 2018. Five different modifications were done to her knee in an attempt to bring her to recovery. This seemingly impossible and unending ordeal did not distract Clark from her end goals as a soccer player. She still had her firm eyes on playing in college.
“Seeing friends who I grew up with committing here and there made me really want to get back onto the field as soon as possible,” Clark said. “It made me see the possibilities and made me want it for myself. It was a matter for me to get back as soon as my knee was ready. I pushed as hard as I could push to get back.”
The difficulties and struggles that Clark went through on her road back to recovery were the hardest she had ever faced in her life.
Just when she thought everything with her knee was behind her, the process suddenly had to start back over again at square one. Every successful athlete must face adversity during at least one point in time, and for Clark, that moment had come.
“The recovery process – we did a lot of things,” Clark recalled. “I never liked going for runs. Anyone who knows me knows that. If there’s a ball there I’ll chase it. But going on long-distance runs has never been my thing. But when I was hurt and I couldn’t run or walk, that was something that I missed the most. Suddenly all I wanted to do was to go on a long run. Some of the cool things I was able to do in rehab was to run underwater and use an anti-gravity treadmill. Those experiences allowed me to feel like an athlete again. To feel like I was moving, running, and showing athletic movements before my body was fully ready to do that was pretty amazing.”
Clark’s grit and willingness to keep fighting taught her maybe the most valuable lessons ever. And she was eventually rewarded for months of unexpected labor that nobody wants to go through. After a successful showcase in North Carolina doing everything she could to reach her goals out on the field, Clark was given several offers to continue her soccer career. She ultimately chose to spend the next four years at Cleveland State University, where she will study chemical engineering.
But it is looking like her last chance of high school glory has suddenly slipped away. After several past trips to the state semifinals, a healthy senior year was about to be something special for Clark and the Dolphins.
Unfortunately, another unforeseen event, this time a global pandemic, got in the way of her championship plans. But we have not seen even close to the end of Clark’s remarkable soccer story.
Cleveland State is getting a resilient, battle-tested, and hard-working player. After all that she has gone through the last few years, her time as a Viking is bound to be one to remember.
By Wes Kerr
