Charlotte FC’s Chris Hegardt loves every moment of soccer because he knows its fragility
When Chris Hegardt entered the operating room and went under anesthesia, he and everyone else in the room expected him to leave in a bulky knee brace and face a recovery time of around nine months.
Instead, when he woke, the still-groggy Charlotte FC midfielder was told he could walk out of the building and that he’d be able to play in under three months.
The trimmed recovery time allowed the 20-year-old to make his return to the pitch this season, giving a young player who approaches life and soccer with a free spirit a chance to apply lessons from another serious childhood health scare to help guide him through the rehab process.
“(Soccer’s) my life,” he told The Charlotte Observer. “So when it’s taken away from you, it’s kind of tough for that time.”
After Charlotte’s home opener, a 1-0 loss to the LA Galaxy in front of an MLS-record crowd of 74,479, Hegardt planted in a training session and felt a twinge in his knee. An MRI revealed a meniscus tear that would’ve and should’ve ended his season.
“Those first two to three weeks (after the MRI) were heartbreaking for me knowing that possibly I wouldn’t be able to play again this year,” Hegardt said.
But after he went under for the mid-March procedure, surgeons opened his knee and found much less damage than the MRI showed. That changed their plans and allowed them to do a less intense meniscectomy, cutting Hegardt’s recovery time to just two months.
Even though he walked out, the forward still faced an intense rehab process that forced him to meet a set of benchmarks before returning to the field. He completed a variety of activities, progressing from running on anti-gravity to working on the side field with a trainer to his final hurdle — cutting.
Once he cleared that benchmark, he got the go-ahead to return to the field ahead of Charlotte’s home matchup against Vancouver, but did not enter the first four games he was eligible for with a host of forwards ahead of him.
He stepped down for a rehab game, playing 66 minutes in Charlotte Independence’s June 18 match against North Carolina FC.
“I felt great, my body felt great, I did really well there,” Hegardt said. “I kind of knew I was ready to get back playing games with Charlotte FC.”
It took a special set of circumstances for him to return to Charlotte’s lineup, as the team went to Montreal without 10 players due to health and safety protocols. Hegardt played nine minutes in the contest.
“I definitely was super excited and then before I went in, I got a little bit of butterflies,” he said. “I just felt grateful to be back out there and it felt so good.”
Quinn McNeill, his teammate on the Independence and who made his MLS debut in that match, praised Hegardt’s performance a couple weeks after the match.
“I think he’s done excellent. He’s been a really good player for us and in training you can see it,” McNeill said.
The game served as a reminder to everyone of what Hegardt had been working toward, grueling rehab as a pathway to re-enter the pitch. The midfielder recalled a play he had that reminded him of his skill level — his first touch.
“I got it on the right side and then I chopped the left back and he kind of fell then I put in a ball … and we almost scored actually off of it,” he said. “That was one of my first plays back and I was like, ‘dang, I can still do this well.’ ”
Throughout his rehab, Hegardt thought back to lessons he learned from his childhood when a soccer ball hit him square in the stomach. A seven-year-old Hegardt couldn’t breathe and felt extreme pain surging through his body.
A trip to the hospital revealed a malignant cancerous tumor on his liver.
“That was a lot more rehab than this (knee injury),” Hegardt said before correcting himself. “It wasn’t rehab … I had to get chemo and then ended up getting a liver transplant.”
Recovering from those treatments took the young soccer player 6-8 months, time that he spent figuring out what he could do outside of soccer.
“You have to kind of take up new hobbies because you’re not playing soccer,” he said.
In his recovery from the knee issue, Hegardt became an ardent Xbox player (he’s a big Call of Duty fan) and a new cook (he enjoys making rice, teriyaki chicken and grilled vegetables).
But the most important thing he picked up was an appreciation for soccer, he said. Hegardt is happy to be back on the pitch, and wants to get back in the lineup to help his team make a playoff push. Entering Saturday’s 8 p.m. match at Inter Miami, Charlotte FC is tied with Columbus for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot with 26 points.
But he knows he’s young, and contributions can come in many forms. His past struggles have given him an appreciation for the sport’s highs and lows.
“The first few weeks of the season, I was doing really well … then the next day in training you get hurt,” he said.
“I just think from my experiences and what I’ve been through in life … the next day is not guaranteed, so it’s like, just enjoy your soccer and have fun and work as hard as you can … because you never know when you’re gonna retire, when you’re gonna be done playing.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
