(CSTV U-WIRE) SAN JOSE, Calif. -- "Good things come out of horrible situations," said senior Cynthia Pinkney, a native of Anaheim who transferred from Cypress College in 2004, after recalling her three seasons on the San Jose State University women's soccer team.
She tore ligaments in her knee during a preseason game of her first season at SJSU, sidelining her from playing competitively for about six months and taking its toll on her body for the rest of her college career.
"I never fully recovered from that injury," she said. "Mentally, physically, I just wasn't that girl when I came up here."
Despite her struggles, Pinkney said she would not trade any part of the past three years of her life because she made powerful relationships along the way.
While rehabilitating her knee in the SJSU Athletics training room, Pinkney met her future boyfriend, Ricky Saucedo, a former SJSU baseball player who was working out his injured shoulder.
"I'm trying to do leg lifts and he's working out his shoulder, and it's like, 'Hey, what are you doing later?'" she said with a laugh.
She said she became close friends with teammates who were injured at the same time she was.
"I got to bond with all the people who were injured," she said. "You start to understand how it feels to have your dream taken away from you, and it really brings you to a deeper friendship level."
Meaghan Norbeck, Pinkney's best friend and former teammate, said the constant pain of injury puts players in a position to lean on each other.
"It hurts every day," said Norbeck, a senior majoring in sociology. "You want to play well and you can't. You really need that moral support to let each other know it's going to be alright."
Although she was plagued with injuries during her college career, Pinkney recalled a few shining on-the-field moments.
She said she will never forget a game at Fresno State University's Senior Day, where the Spartans broke a scoreless tie in the game's final moments and won 1-0.
"We hated (Fresno State). They hated us," she said. "And we totally just watched them all cry on their senior day. It was great."
