Georgia State soccer player Joey Syfert plays with torn ACL

Joey Syfert is not one more banged-up athlete who comes in for treatment at Georgia State's athletic training offices. The soccer player is material for a medical-journal article that trainer Ale Oliveira intends to write.

Chances are good Oliveira will cover fairly fresh ground. Syfert, a senior from McEachern High, has played this season on a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

"Soccer, it's very simple," Oliveira said. "You have this type of injury, you fix it and you come back."

Urgency and a high degree of determination have compelled Syfert to take the field for the Panthers. After transferring from Reinhardt for the chance to play Division I soccer, Syfert started 15 games in the 2008 season, then tore his left ACL in August 2009. He sat out the season, rehabilitated and then re-tore it in April of this year.

The conclusion that his college career was finished was obvious to nearly everyone.

"I couldn't take no for an answer," Syfert said. "Too much work had been put into this last year for me to play."

Syfert considered the risks -- long-term injury to his knee, as well as greater likelihood of tearing his meniscus -- and went ahead, even after he ended up tearing both meniscuses in the knee while doing rehab.

The solutions were a tight-fitting brace that stabilizes his knee, more rehab to strengthen his muscles around the joint and an inordinate amount of grit. Syfert said some days he feels fine, but on others he can't really walk.

Without the ACL to limit his knee's rotational and forward movement, Syfert can feel it moving around in the joint. When he runs, he said he can hear the bones clicking against each other, "which is sometimes disturbing. Sometimes we'll laugh about it."

Playing collegiate soccer on a torn ACL is, at the least, highly rare. Maryland coach Sasho Cirovski, in his 20th year as a college coach, said he had never heard of anyone playing with that injury and called it "some form of minor miracle" when told of Syfert. Panthers coach Brett Surrency, in his first season as head coach after five as an assistant, said that Syfert's determination and love for soccer are "unmatched on the team."

After six months of rehabbing the knee, Syfert played his first game in nearly two years Oct. 6 against William & Mary. Syfert, who was a swift left back before the injuries, has become an outside left midfielder. Syfert is a self-described role player, relying on smarts to distribute to his teammates. He typically comes off the bench for 30 to 40 minutes.

He already received his payback Oct. 20. Against Old Dominion, at the time the second-place team in the Colonial Athletic Association, Syfert tapped in what turned out to be the game-winner in the Panthers' 4-3 win. Teammates swarmed Syfert, screaming "You did it!" Syfert was so overcome with emotion -- it was the first game his parents had seen him play in two years -- that he almost had to take himself out of the game.