Tyler Sanda was 20 years old, he’d already undergone four surgeries in two years and it was soon to be five.
No one would have blamed the University of Akron redshirt sophomore from North Royalton if he’d quit the Zips soccer team this spring.
Since his senior year at Cleveland St. Ignatius, he’d needed two reconstructions of the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, torn twice in six months, including during his third college practice.
After a year of rehab came labrum repairs in both hips, caused by a likely congenital abnormality of his hip sockets. He was about to learn that the October 2013 surgery on his left meniscus, fixed with the ACL, hadn’t taken and he would need another arthroscopic procedure in July.
“I was tired. I felt like I wasn’t really recovering. I was still having a lot of pain in my hips because I have arthritis. I was getting to a point where it was like, ‘Is it worth it? I’m really struggling,’ ” Sanda said Wednesday.
The Zips were embarking on a 10-day trip to Brazil on May 20. Trainer Brett Draper heard Sanda was thinking of leaving the team and told UA coach Jared Embick he could save money if Sanda didn’t go. But Embick thought Sanda still had much to offer in terms of leadership.
“I said, ‘Whether he wants to quit or not, with what he’s been through, I’m taking him to Brazil. After Brazil we can talk about it if he can’t come to grips with how things are,’ ” Embick said.
An appreciative Sanda decided to postpone his decision to quit.
Then on May 26, during the third game in Brazil, Sanda’s key moment arrived. The Zips were playing legendary Fluminense FC’s under-20 team and trailed 2-1 in a match Embick thought they should have been winning.
“We’d been playing Tyler in a midfield role. We didn’t have a guy in the front half giving the little extra heart and determination,” Embick recalled after practice Wednesday. “I subbed him in and said, ‘You’re going up top. We need two goals. I need you to run hard and play your game.’ He scored two goals and won us the game.”
In a blog post Sanda wrote for gozips.com, Sanda said he played only the final five minutes and his goals came about two minutes apart.
Now the Zips are 13-3-2 and ranked third in the latest RPI poll going into Friday night’s 7 p.m. Mid-American Conference tournament semifinal against West Virginia at FirstEnergy Stadium. The championship is set for 1 p.m. Sunday. Two victories should earn UA a top-eight seed in next week’s NCAA Tournament and the right to host its first game.
Embick calls that victory over Fluminense FC “the turning point for the whole team.” And it wouldn’t have happened without Sanda.
“We’d been playing well, but finding ways to lose. We never got over the hump against a good opponent up until that stage and we finally did and he was a key reason why,” Embick said. “He scores the next game, we win 2-0. That kind of propelled us into the season with confidence.”
Of course, Sanda is glad he continued to play.
“Oh, yeah. This year has been so fun,” Sanda said. “We grew so much as a team in Brazil, they kind of became family. This is the year to be part of this great team.”
With Sanda just four months removed from his fifth surgery, Embick came to realize that if Sanda played in three consecutive games he “kind of lumbers around” in the third. For that reason, Sanda has played in 11 of 18 games. He scored his first career goal in a 3-3 double-overtime tie against Ohio State on Sept. 16 and notched his second on Saturday against Bowling Green. He had an assist on Oct. 3 at Alabama-Birmingham.
Sanda continues to go in up top, just like against Fluminense.
“My role is almost like an energy boost,” Sanda said. “I like to think people get more focused, start running harder. Sometimes I’m used as a stability guy, help calm things down.”
That might not have been possible without Sanda’s hip surgeries, which came four weeks apart last year.
Luke Kuchta, Sanda’s physical therapist at Strength Fitness and Therapy in Parma, said misshaped hip joints are common. But those who play soccer, hockey, wrestle or are cheerleaders might eventually need surgery.
“Think of it as a puzzle piece and you kind of force it in,” Kuchta explained. “It gets exacerbated with athletes, especially soccer players, because they’re putting their hips in a lot of different positions, a lot of pressure through their hips. If you keep trying to force that puzzle piece, the edges break down.”
Kuchta said Sanda’s arthritis made the hip surgery more urgent.
“The doctor told him his was more extreme than most kids his age,” Kuchta said. “I think he told him if he didn’t have it done, there would have been a chance he would have needed total hip replacements in his 30s or early 40s.”
Sanda said the surgeon told him his hip angle was an “unheard of” 98 percent, and that was probably the reason he tore his ACL twice.
“They said, ‘You probably had such restricted range of motion that it put too much pressure on your knees,’ ” Sanda said.
A physical therapist for six years and owner of Strength Fitness and Therapy for two years, Kuchta said he never doubted Sanda would return to the field, even after five surgeries.
“It’s pretty incredible,” Kuchta said. “On paper you think, ‘Will he play again?’ But once I started working with him I never really questioned it.
“I can honestly say he worked harder in the gym than any patient I’ve ever had. If you told him to do two sets of 10, he’d do three of 15. He’d been in here for three or four hours a day. He’d come early to work out with the hockey players. You’d be trying to break him, thinking, ‘He’ll be dying after this. He won’t be able to do any more’ and he’d do it. He just had the drive.”
Sanda has three years of eligibility remaining at UA. Embick can see him developing into more of a key role, especially with a hopefully healthy offseason.
Even if that happens, Sanda won’t forget the days when he wondered if he could keep going.
“It was to a point with all these surgeries where they said, ‘The chance of you getting back to your full self are very slim,’ ” Sanda said. “One ACL is 80 percent. Two hip surgeries are 80 percent. Add another knee on ... you multiply them all together and I ended up with like a 50-50 shot of being capable again.
“I’ve definitely lost a little bit of speed since my high school days. Who knows if it’s still going to come. I’ve had to change the way I play. A little bit of athletic ability got taken away, but a little more soccer smarts came with it.”
After an 82-3-3 career record, a 2010 national title and being named a high school All-American at St. Ignatius, Sanda could not have imagined a college career marked by potholes of hardship.
“It was definitely a transition from having a lot of good things coming my way in high school and then kind of having everything stripped away,” Sanda said. “It was a complete change. I guess it was a life lesson for a lot of things.”
But the Zips have a national championship dream and Sanda could provide a spark at the right time, just as he did in May.
“I look back at that day a lot and I’m happy that I said, ‘We’re not going to let you call it this early. You’ve got four years, you might as well play your four years. Then if you never play again, you never play again. I believe you have a lot to offer and you’re definitely going to Brazil,’ ” Embick said.
“Just a great person. I’m happy for him. He loves the school and the team. You want to see those guys succeed.”
Marla Ridenour can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Read her blog at www.ohio.com/marla. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.