An ACL tear helped Kate Schleusener make the decision not to play soccer at the college level, at least not her freshman year. But the injury hasn't stopped her from pursuing her love of sports. She's even discovered a new one: yoga.

Schleusener tore her anterior cruciate ligament during the state soccer tournament in October when another player ran into her and knocked her down. "Which is crazy because she was like 5 foot 1," said the Stevens High School senior, who is 5 feet 11 inches tall. "It was kind of a bad way to end a senior year."

Fortunately for Schleusener and her teammate Mikayla Anderson, improvements in ACL tear treatments meant a fairly speedy recovery.

Both girls tore their ACLs in the fall and underwent surgery in October. They followed that with about six months of physical therapy. Today, both are essentially recovered.

Lew Papendick, an orthopedic surgeon at Black Hills Orthopedic & Spine Center, said the actual surgical technique for treating ACL tears hasn't changed a lot in the past 20 years, except that it's now done by arthroscopy, which requires smaller incisions. The technique also has become more accurate and more reproducible.

Papendick said modifications in the surgery are being studied, but he doesn't expect to see those changes for another 10 years.

To fix an ACL tear, surgeons do not sew the damaged ACL. It doesn't work, Papendick said. Instead, they remove the torn ligament and replace it with a graft. The optimum place to get the graft is from the patient, which is called autograft.

Papendick said most often, the central one-third of the tendon at the bottom of the knee is used to replace the torn ACL.

Once surgery is completed, the real work begins. And this where the big improvements in ACL treatment have been made.

"I think one of the major changes that have occurred is immediate physical therapy," Papendick said.

Initially, physical therapists didn't start working with patients for weeks and recovery took as long as a year. Instead, the knee was immobilized in a cast, usually at a 45-degree angle. There were, however, people who rejected this philosophy and started using their knee earlier. "They found that people … who just started using the knee did better," Papendick said.

Today, physical therapy begins almost immediately after surgery.

Matt Sailors, a physical therapist at Black Hills Orthopedic & Spine Center, said immediate rehab shortens the recovery time to about five months.

"We start them moving the knee the day after surgery," Sailors said. "We get them loading on it … strengthening it right away."

This change has meant the difference in ending a career or returning to sports in half a year, Sailors said.

Schleusener has mostly finished her ACL rehabilitation and has regained almost full motion in her leg. While she didn't get to finish her high school soccer career, she's been able to expand her horizons with yoga and she hasn't ruled out someday playing soccer again.

"It was kind of a shock," she said of the abrupt stop of her high sports career. "I do yoga now. It's so different from anything I've ever done. I really like it."