The feeling was all too familiar for Mallory Vehar.

In Syracuse’s 2014 NCAA tournament quarterfinal game against Boston College, her right leg buckled as she crossed it over her left and her body plopped down on the Carrier Dome turf.

Vehar came to the sideline and found her way to a Carrier Dome tunnel after the play ended. There, Vehar’s mother, Wendy Vehar, dangled over the railing to hug her daughter.

“She cried and she said, ‘I’m not going to play again,’” Wendy Vehar said.

Vehar had torn her ACL for the second time in three seasons at SU.

She’s pushed along her rehabilitation process to get back on the field this season and with the toughness her three brothers helped instill in her, Vehar has become part of SU’s defensive plans again as a starter and team captain. The junior will get a chance to keep working herself back into No. 3 SU’s (2-0) lineup during a doubleheader this Sunday — starting with Canisius (0-1) at noon and Presbyterian at 7:30 p.m.

“She could see the rehab she had in front of her with all the work she had done before,” Wendy Vehar said, “but I knew it was just a temporary thing.”

Vehar had already rehabbed her ACL once in her freshman year. She was guarding Katrina Dowd, an SU assistant coach at the time, when she turned her body right. Her left leg stayed planted in the ground and Vehar fell. She recalls Dowd asking, “Did I step on your foot?”

Although trainers thought her knee was fine, and they let Vehar test it while she ran up and down the sideline, it was far from OK. When her knee was checked later, a doctor found she had torn her ACL and her meniscus, the latter likely from running on the sideline after already tearing her ACL.

But after seeing Vehar work her way back and stay healthy as a sophomore, former SU teammate Natalie Glanell still gets chills remembering when Vehar went down last year.

“Seeing her down, especially, is an unusual thing,” Glanell said, “… she’s the type of person that can get hit, kicked, bruised and will shake it off or not even say anything.”

Vehar’s mother had little doubt she would come back. As part of a family with three brothers, Vehar grew up around athletics. Her oldest brother, Griffin Vehar, a former SU lacrosse player, said they didn’t treat her any differently than they would treat each other.

Wrestling matches break out in the living room and even their father, Brian Vehar, will jump in. When it’s snowing during Thanksgiving or Christmas, all four will still toss a lacrosse ball around. They tease her by avoiding passing the ball to her or saying, “Oh, the boys are here to play, Meg,” referencing the character in the TV show “Family Guy.”

“I think just kind of growing up, the environment where there wasn’t a ton of tears,” Vehar said, “… how we played was fighting.”

To rehab, she applied the toughness that’s earned her the distinction of toughest sibling in the family.

Wendy Vehar said her daughter’s doctor at the Cleveland Clinic had been conservative about her rehab out of fear that Vehar might tear her right meniscus. Vehar instead pushed the envelope with her workouts and her recovery timeline.

This summer, Vehar went back home to Hudson, Ohio and worked out with her brother, Zach Vehar, an SU faceoff specialist. The only time she talked during their workouts was when she snapped at him to correct his form on lower-body workouts.

“I’d be doing it the wrong way,” Zach Vehar said, “and I would do it the way she told me, and it was significantly harder.”

When Vehar came back to Syracuse, she missed most of the fall season. Assistant head coach Regy Thorpe said Vehar is still being weaned into her normal starting spot.

But on Saturday, after the first 11 SU starters were announced, just one captain remained. Vehar stood in the tunnel, kicked her brace-supported right leg back three times, like a bull readying to charge, and as the public address announcer called her name, ran on the field.

Published on February 12, 2015 at 12:12 am

Contact Chris: cjlibona@syr.edu | @ChrisLibonati