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Lindsay Greco is once more a key player for the women’s soccer team despite spending last year on the sidelines due to an injury.

Going into 2001, Lindsay Greco was feeling pretty good about the development of her soccer game.

Scoring to put UCLA up 1-0 over North Carolina in the 2000 NCAA championship game highlighted her freshman campaign. Although the Bruins lost the game 2-1, Greco took solace in the fact that she could come back in 2001 with a senior-laden team and make yet another NCAA title run.

She wound up finishing fourth on the team for the number of goals scored; it was one of the most promising freshmen seasons in the Pac-10.

Four games into her sophomore year, Greco was striking with a vengeance, leading the nation with six goals scored.

It was just two shy of what she had scored in the whole of her freshman year.

She seemed on her way to All-American status.

But on Sept. 13th, 2001, during an easy warm-up drill at practice, Greco accidentally twisted her knee and heard a strange popping noise. The sound stunned her, but she felt no pain.

But that sound – which Greco says she can still hear to this day – led her to fear the worst. She was immediately taken to the UCLA Medical Center, where she found out she had torn her ACL. The ACL is the anterior cruciate ligament – the one that guides the tibia (or shin bone) through its normal range of motion. This injury would put Greco out the rest of the year.

What was shaping to be a breakout season turned into every soccer player’s worst nightmare.

“I was really sad,” said Greco. She eventually broke down into tears of frustration after the injury was confirmed.

“I just knew that it’s a long process to rehab. I didn’t even know that I was on the (Soccer America) Team of the Week until after I got hurt, and that just made it even worse.”

After surgery, Greco had to spend the rest of the season putting in long rehab hours, staying home on road trips, and watching the rest of the games from the sidelines. She was given a medical redshirt for the rest of the season.

“We were devastated,” said senior defender Tracey Winzen when she found out that Greco would not return in 2001. “She was our leading scorer. She only played so many games but she was scoring left and right and she was just a huge asset to the team.”

Greco watched from the sidelines as the Bruins went 16-2 the rest of the way, winning the Pac-10 title before a 1-0 upset by Florida 1-0 in the NCAA quarterfinals last year.

“We missed her a lot last year,” UCLA head coach Jillian Ellis said. “I felt that with Lindsay we probably had a chance at winning the whole thing, as she gave us a little more depth up front.”

With moral support from her teammates, family and friends, Greco is back this year, a healthy sophomore once again. While her three goals this year don’t match last year’s pace, her five assists make her an indispensable member of the Bruin lineup.

“It was hard at first getting back into it because our forward line is all new people.” Greco said. “But I like being back, and now I have the rest of this year and two more soccer seasons to just play. I’m excited because I know our program is only getter better.”