On Fridays, Cracked Racquets features an article written by a player or coach, which we call The Tennis Tribune. These articles are meant to give our readers a first person perspective of the grind, the highs and lows, and any and all interesting details of what it’s like to be inside the life of an elite level tennis player or coach.

This week’s featured writer is Allie Kiick. Allie turned professional at the age of 18, and has been ranked as high as 137 in singles and 214 in doubles while playing on tour. She writes about her many struggles the past few years with injuries, illness, and even cancer. After fighting through all that adversity, Allie still finds a way to keep competing. We hope you find her story as inspiring as we did! Thanks Allie!

For those of you who have gone to a grand slam, what do you see?

As a player who has competed in them, I can tell you I see an incredible lifestyle: we travel to beautiful destinations, enjoy transportation to and from tournaments, stay in cool hotels, interact with fans, and generally receive all-around five star treatment. What an amazing life, right?

But the real question is this: have you ever considered how much it took to get there? The sacrifices, losses, tears, and pain – none of those things can be quantified or measured. You can’t calculate sacrifice or count pain on your fingers. All I can tell you from my personal experience is that it takes a lot of each.A lot. You see, the problem is, the majority of fans fail to recognize the things that make us the tennis players we are. How could they? It’s often quite difficult to understand or recognize something they haven’t experienced personally. And because of that, I want to share my story with you.

I turned pro just short of my 18th birthday after good successes in different tournaments. I would be lying if I said the beginning of my career was tough because aside from a few ups and downs, I did pretty well. I shot up pretty quickly in the rankings and was beating and or hanging with some of the top players. However, my real battles started at Wimbledon qualifying in 2014. I was having yet another great run after reaching the semi-finals of a 100k in France. Better yet, I’d reached my career high of #137 in the world at age 19.

During my first round of Wimbledon qualifying, I was simply walking to the other side of the court after a point, and suddenly felt a horrible shooting pain on the lateral side of my knee. Oddly enough, that pain disappeared after a few seconds, so I thought to myself, “Ok, you’re fine, you probably just tweaked it.” I ended up losing that match, and was so upset I collected my check, got in a car, and went back to my hotel room.

The next week my friend and I had to go to a 25k in Krstinehamn, Sweden. I played my first match and the pain in my knee came back – except this time, it was constant. I had a hard time moving and serving, yet somehow I was able to get the win. I remember going back to the hotel room after my singles match, lying on my bed, resting before my upcoming doubles match. When it was finally time to start getting ready, I got up and collapsed to the ground. My knee completely gave out on me and the pain was unbearable at that point. I looked down to see that my knee was round and swollen like a baseball. I was forced to default from doubles that day, and retire from singles the following day. I immediately boarded a plane, flew home, got an MRI, and saw a doctor two days later. The doctor told me I had a bone bruise in my femoral condyle and had to take 4 weeks off to let it heal.

Well, let’s just say those 4 weeks turned into 8 months. With no income, I lost every dime I’d ever made, and had to watch, helplessly and in horror, as my ranking plummeted. I felt like all that hard work I did, all those amazing wins, were all for nothing.

I remember it was around December and one of my best friends was having a Christmas Boat Parade party. When I left the party (around 11:30 pm), I was getting on a highway to go home when traffic came to a complete stop right as you were to merge on. I remember having to stomp on the break as I almost hit the car in front of me because it was such a rapid stop. I remember right as I said in my head “gosh that was a close….” *boom*…. everything suddenly was like…. in slow motion. I still to this day can’t explain how it felt. I realized then, I was hit by someone and because I was not wearing my seat belt, I hit the right side of my face on my steering wheel. Turns out the driver that hit me was drunk and my car was ruined.

Finally, the time had come for me to step back out on the court. Luckily for me, I was awarded a wild card into Indian Wells (I qualified the year before). I decided that I wanted to play a warm up tournament before throwing myself back in such a high-level tournament, so I chose a WTA on red clay in Florianopolis, Brazil. My favorite surface . However, when my mom and I went down to the US embassy to get our visas, we were informed that we would not be able to get them in time for when we had to leave. UGH! Then, the day we were originally supposed to leave, I woke up with the worst sore throat of my life. I ended up having to go to the emergency room about 48 hours later because my tonsils had become so big that my airway was closing.

I was diagnosed with Mono, my response to which was, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I still traveled to play Indian Wells, where I lost in the first round to a very good player. After that, I started back at the lower ITF tournaments and really struggled with my come back. I was on a losing streak. I had no confidence and no money (I was being supported by my parents), and I was alone almost every week and honestly wanted to quit.

And just when I had nothing left, I won one of the biggest tournaments of my career (50,000), which increased my ranking over 100 spots, gave me some cash, and most importantly, boosted my confidence. I ended up being one of the last people in Wimbledon qualies all thanks to winning that one tournament.

I stepped back on court for Wimbledon 2015, proud and confident, when all the sudden I felt the exact same pain that I felt the prior year – but in the OPPOSITE KNEE. Panic struck me. I ended up losing that match and flew home to find I had another bone bruise in the same exact spot of the opposite knee. I was sidelined AGAIN, but the only good news was my doctor said it was a smaller bruise so the off period wouldn’t be nearly as long. I spent my time away from the game being super active. I swam every single morning and made sure my upper body stayed in tip top shape (I love fitness).

On the morning of August 18th 2015, I was just getting ready to go do my usual swim. I was sitting in the parking lot of the swimming center when I got a call from my skin doctor telling me to call the office asap. I called back for him to tell me that the mole they punched when I went in to see them last time came back as stage 1 Melanoma. I didn’t hear any words after cancer. I was frozen.

Later that day, my parents and I went in to see the doctor and come up with a plan. It turned out my skin cancer was actually classified as stage 2, but my body had fought back and reverted it to stage 1. Since I was only at stage 1 (the stages go from 0 to 4), no treatment other than removing it and seeing an oncologist every 3 months to check my lymph nodes was necessary.

Now that we had taken care of the melanoma (for now), the conversation turned back to my knees. My parents and I decided to get a second opinion since my right knee wasn’t improving. We flew to Vail, Colorado to see one of the best knee surgeons in the world, Dr. LaPrade, at the Steadman Clinic. He decided he wanted to scope me because he didn’t think I had a bone bruise. However, he couldn’t be sure unless he went inside the knee. It turned out he was right and what I had was something called an OCD lesion, which is considered to be a soft cartilage defect. I blew a hole in my knee and was bone on bone, which was why I was in so much pain. The only way to fix a problem like this is to do a big surgery called the Osteoarticular Transfer System, or OATS, procedure. This procedure consists of taking cartilage from a young, healthy, cadaver and inserting it where the hole is, like a puzzle. It’s an invasive surgery and the minimum recovery time is a year.

Since I had also experienced the same pain in the left knee, we decided we wanted to get that one scoped as well to see if it had the same issue. It did – and it was worse: I blew an even bigger hole in my left knee than I did my right. It was truly a devastating time for me because I couldn’t figure out why all these things kept happening to me. My only way back to tennis was to go ahead with these surgeries. Despite knowing the road I had ahead, I was not going to give up. I would make it back no matter how deeply the odds were stacked against me.

All together, the amount of time I was out for totals 3 years and 4 months. I started my journey back in March 2017 at the USTA training center in Orlando. I had nothing but my past to show. I had no ranking and I was 15 pounds underweight, yet they still welcomed me back with open arms. I’ve had the honor to work with the USA Fed Cup captain, Kathy Rinaldi, who has truly been by my side every single step of the way. I owe everything to her and the USTA because without them, I wouldn’t have had a second chance at chasing my dreams.

So here I am, having attained my career high ranking of 137 at 19 years old, dropping to 387, and rising back to 234 before getting injured, which left me with a ranking of 0. It brings me such joy to say I am now #387 in the world after starting to compete in April. I qualified for my first grand slam at the US Open this year and am on a plane as I’m writing this to Australia, hoping I can slip into qualifying. One of the many sacrifices a tennis player has to make includes leaving on Christmas day (my favorite holiday) to fly a total of 20 hours to show up for a tournament I may not even get in. Most will think I am crazy, but I’m willing to take the risk.

As athletes, we all have fought so many battles. We all have our own story. But at the end of the day the battles we have fought and overcame make us who we are. So next time you go to a tournament and think, “Wow what an amazing life these players have,”it’s worth thinking about that which is beyond the surface of what you see on the court: monumental sacrifice and the type of perseverance and grit required to overcome extraordinary odds and circumstances.

– Allie Kick, American Tennis Player –

This article is part of the Tennis Tribune Series. Check out a new featured article every Friday, written by players and coaches themselves.