All women's basketball fans know about ACLs. But what do we know about what an athlete must do return to the court?

Michelle Smith of the San Francisco Chronicle writes about the process in, "THE LONG ROAD BACK: ACL injuries exact as much a mental toll as a physical one on athletes."

It all begins with the shock of the injury, often a combination of grief and denial. The reverberations can ripple through the entire team, other players working through their fear that this could well happen to them - because it often does.

Those initial days are followed by the stark realities of surgery and months of rehab, compounded, particularly in-season, by the isolation of being the one left behind as everyone else moves on.