Holly B. is an active professional in her late twenties who spends her free time playing recreational flag football and league basketball. She shares her experience with us as she explores the world of sports.

I've been aware of ACL injuries for a long time, especially after playing high school basketball. Even though several of the girls on my team were taken out of the game for an entire season, I never experienced an ACL injury myself. I guess I thought ACL injuries happened to "weaker" people or individuals with bad bones. Little did I know that it has very little to do with that, and that 10 years in the future that I would experience my own ACL tear.

It's taken a lot to help me realize how common ACL injuries are. Just a few months before I got hurt, one of the girls on my flag football team went down during practice. She simply took a sharp turn and tore her ACL from the movement. No contact with anyone. When I tore mine, I had a whole long list of "mentors" - ladies who had previously hurt their ACLs and gone through surgery. Wow! I had no idea so many people got hurt. I thought flag football was a low-injury sport.

Those aren't the only cases of ACL tears I've heard of recently. Just last week I went to the eye doctor for a checkup. As it turns out, my optometrist had an ACL injury around the time that I did, and during the same sport - flag football.  For some reason that really stuck with me... and now I truly understand how common ACL tears are.