St. Mary’s Springs senior Ellie Judkins slid on both knees in the penalty box to head in a goal off of a corner kick against Hustisford/Dodgeland on May 2.
For some, it felt like the full-circle moment for Judkins.
“I remember telling her physical therapist and her orthopedic doctor, ‘She’s sliding on her knees without even thinking about one being surgically repaired,’” Ellie’s father, Andrew Judkins, said. “She just has a certain level of competitiveness. We wondered if she would lose that edge, but she did not.”
A little less than two years earlier, on May 13, 2022, a day after a 2-1 loss to Hustisford/Dodgeland, Judkins tore her ACL in her right knee.
“[It was] worst case scenario,” Ellie’s mother, Gena Judkins, said. "It’s like a club you never want to belong to.
“I think initially she took it really hard. She had a hard time being sedentary, being kind of cut off from competition.”
Ellie said although she wishes it had never happened, the timing of the injury was about as good as it could be.
It gave her about 10 months to rehab to get back for the following soccer season, which became her goal, but rehabbing instead of playing was a new experience.
“I’m such a competitor,” Judkins said. “I’ve always been playing a sport my entire life. I’ve never gone more than a couple weeks without playing a sport, so it was definitely a lot different for me.”
Judkins said she has always thought of her speed and quickness as one of her biggest assets in sports. She said Dr. Joseph Kemp, an orthopedic specialist from SSM Health, told her that an athlete that tears his or her ACL can sometimes lose his or her first step.
“That scared me because my speed is a huge part of my skill in both basketball and soccer,” Judkins said. “My first step is what I’ve always had to get past people.”
That drove her to spend time working hard to make sure that did not happen. Judkins said she went to TNT Fitness, which is just south of Fond du Lac, to work hard to regain that speed and quickness.
She also said that Mike Schraufnagel, her physical therapist from SSM, played a huge role in getting her back quickly and at the level she expected.
“He was a great guy to work with,” Judkins said. “He really pushed me but was also very supportive. I feel like what he did for me definitely helped my recovery speed up.”
Judkins even found support in unexpected places. Shortly after the injury, Winnebago Lutheran Academy alumna Alayna Suprenand reached out to Judkins to offer her encouragement.
Suprenand tore her ACLs in both knees while she was at WLA before returning as player of the year in both basketball and softball her senior year.
Andrew Judkins said it was cool to see camaraderie among athletes, even from rival schools.
“There’s a connection even between competitors,” Andrew Judkins said. “For her to reach out to Ellie was huge. I remember when she texted her out of the blue; that was pretty cool.”
Judkins said she was encouraged by the text from Suprenand, who now plays college basketball at Bemidji State.
“Hearing that from another athlete that experienced the same injury, plays the same sport as me and was able to awfully recover was extremely uplifting and gave me hope for a strong recovery,” Judkins said.
That winter, Judkins was still a part of the basketball team despite knowing that it was near certainty that she would not get cleared in time. She went to practice every day and would shoot around and do any warmups she was allowed to do and then go to the weight room to try to get her right leg back to being as strong as her left.
Mitch Redig, the athletic director and girls' basketball coach at Springs, said he believes Judkins’s presence not only helped her gain a newfound appreciation for sports, but also provided younger players an example to strive for.
“In addition to gaining a different perspective of the game, Ellie gained a huge amount of respect from the underclassmen in our program and was a great model of what it meant to be a teammate,” Redig said.
Judkins said she tried to work as hard as anyone else during that time, but it was frustrating that she could not see the results right away.
“The hardest part was not being able to step on the court,” Judkins said. “It almost felt like I was putting in the same amount of work [as the healthy players] because I was working so hard to get cleared, but I wasn’t able to play.
“I wasn’t doing it alone, but it felt like not many people could understand the amount of time I was out.”
Even though she couldn’t play, Judkins said she doesn’t think she would have met her goal if she wasn’t able to be around the support system that the basketball team provided.
Gena Judkins said part of that is attending a smaller school, which allows the kids to be involved in anything they are interested in.
“Having that smaller-knit group is so important,” Gena Judkins said. “Ellie is a social person, she’s a competitive person so team sports is the perfect outlet for her.
“Basketball especially is a long season and it is a relatively small team at the Springs, but they’re very close friends and teammates.”
Judkins was able to meet, and even beat, her recovery goal. She was cleared mid-February, and though she was not cleared in time to participate in the playoffs for basketball, she was fully ready for her junior soccer season.
Along with her return came success that the Ledger soccer team had not experienced in nearly a decade. In 2023, Springs shared the Flyway title with Lourdes Academy; it was the first conference title since 2014.
This spring, Judkins led her team to do one better: an undefeated Flyway crown. Springs won 16 games this season, which was more than the program won during Judkins’s freshman and sophomore seasons combined.
Judkins said her first two years were challenging because of the lack of team success due to low numbers, but she said her class tried to encourage as many girls to join as they could. The team grew by 10 players from her freshman season to this spring.
“I came out of a club soccer team that won so many tournaments and I was so used to winning and I got onto this team with 14 players, and we just were not that good,” Judkins said “That’s what drove me to get more girls to come out and get the soccer program to be bigger and better.
“I feel awesome about this season being my last season. I feel like it pretty much went as well as we wanted it to go.”
Not only did Springs win the Flyway outright, Judkins was also the conference’s player of the year. She finished the year with 12 goals and 23 assists, which was top-10 in the state.
“I was so shocked and appreciative when coach [Paul Haase] called me,” Judkins said. “I was so grateful for my coach, because I know he does his best to talk about us players well at the conference meeting, and for my teammates, who worked so hard. We won the conference together.”
Judkins is planning to go to the University of Minnesota in the fall and intends to major in marketing.
She would have had an opportunity to continue her soccer career at Edgewood College in Madison had she decided to, but she said she wanted to be in a big city in hopes that it will provide more opportunities.
“Now that I won’t have sports, I want to take the competitive spirit and hard work that I put into sports and I want to put that into my studies and hopefully be successful in college and in my future career,” Judkins said.
Andrew Judkins said he thinks there are clear parallels between team sports and life and that there are lessons that sports can help to teach, whether from playing or from the time Ellie had to sit out.
He said she kept her work ethic through it all.
“I’m just proud of her; she always worked hard,” Andrew Judkins said. “I think that’s going to lead to good things for her in the future.”
In her four years on the ledge, Judkins participated in four sports, won 11 varsity letters and helped secure three Flyway championships: two in soccer and the 2023 girls cross country title.
She did not mention any of that when she said what she hopes people remember about her.
“I hope people remember my intense school spirit and my willingness to compete in numerous sports and always work hard,” Judkins said.
Redig said he believes that’s exactly how she will be remembered.
“Her classmates and teammates looked to Ellie for guidance and followed her lead,” Redig said. “As a coach, I knew exactly what I was going to get from Ellie every day: she was going to come ready to compete to improve herself and her teammates and provide our team with the best opportunity to succeed.
“She was a great role model for her teammates and the next generation of Ledgers.”
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