Parker Roberts inspires Sporting Jax women's soccer with ACL recovery

On a spring Florida morning, Parker Roberts is jogging up and down the Sporting Club Jacksonville practice field. Exchanging passes with her teammates in the heart of training. Chatting with friends on the squad during a break in the action.

In some ways, the energetic midfielder with the No. 2 jersey seems much like the other 27 players on the roster of the first-year team, chasing a piece of Northeast Florida women's soccer history with the Gainbridge Super League leaders in the stretch run. Her road to April soccer is different.

After a one-of-a-kind journey of twists and turns that the former University of Florida midfielder never expected when she signed up for Sporting Jax last June, one word comes to mind: grateful. "It feels amazing just to get any time back on the field, especially in a game setting," she said. The way Sporting Jax drew it up, Roberts — one of only a handful of players with elite experience entering the club's debut — was supposed to be a cornerstone of Jacksonville's first-ever club in a top-division professional women's soccer league.

What happened instead was a devastating knee injury, a grueling recovery and now, during the same season, an improbably rapid return to soccer. "It just shows her work ethic, and the expertise that she's been under as well," Sporting Jax head coach Stacey Balaam said. When Roberts stepped back onto the field on March 14 in Fort Lauderdale, no one cheered harder than the teammates who have been watching her fight all season long.