Courtney Vandersloot making up for lost time after ACL injury: ‘I just want to be out there’

As far as athletes go, Courtney Vandersloot is not particularly superstitious. But when she stepped back onto United Center hardwood for a June 28 game against the Las Vegas Aces, the Chicago Sky guard couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety.

The last time Vandersloot stood center court at the United Center ended as the worst day of her career. Less than five minutes into the Sky’s first-ever game at the Chicago Bulls arena, Vandersloot’s right knee buckled. The official diagnosis – a torn ACL – was obvious within seconds to fans and players alike. The injury marked the end of Vandersloot’s first year back with the Sky – and, ultimately, derailed the season for the team.

The June 28 game wasn’t Vandersloot’s first game back. That moment came two days prior, when she had 10 points and seven assists in just less than 14 minutes as the Sky dropped a franchise record 124 points on the Portland Fire. But returning to the site of the injury held a different weight.

It wasn’t a perfect day. Vandersloot racked up eight assists and played nearly 16 minutes, but the Sky couldn’t keep pace with the Aces, the second-best team in the league. Still, even in a loss, Vandersloot felt a sense of relief as she left the United Center on her own terms.

The worst was over. The pain had not returned. And now she can get back to the main driving force of her decorated career: trying to make the most of the Sky.

“I just want to be out there,” Vandersloot told the Chicago Tribune. “I want to compete and win games. That’s all I can focus on. That’s what I rehabbed so long to do was to be out there with my teammates. All I want is to be available.”

Even now, Vandersloot, the former Gonzaga star, only can describe her injury as a shock. Over the course of 15 years in the WNBA – 13 of which were spent playing double-duty with offseason stints in Europe – the guard never had suffered a major injury. Vandersloot knew she wasn’t invincible. But each season without an injury left a glimmer of hope that perhaps she could remain this healthy and hardy for the entirety of her career.

Through everything in those first two days – the pain, the scans, the medical jargon, the recovery timeline suddenly stretched ahead of her – one question beat a steady, stubborn drumbeat in the back of Vandersloot’s mind: Why now?

More than a year later, Vandersloot figures most athletes have the same response. There’s no “right time” for a serious injury to occur within a player’s career. The key to her recovery centered on pushing away the frustration and confusion.

“I was trying to get answers that I was just never going to get,” Vandersloot, 37, said.

This process marked the beginning of a new era for the Sky, who invested heavily in their medical and training staff over the last year. It included the hiring of new director of health and human performance, Jessica Cohen, who handled Vandersloot’s recovery.

Before last year, Sky players did not have access to a full fleet of trainers and medical staff on a year-round basis, often relying on outsourced care to facilitate their recovery from long-term injuries. Now, the team can offer more holistic care for injured athletes.

For Vandersloot, that included an extensive “prehab” routine before she ever underwent surgery. Vandersloot’s ACL repair procedure was scheduled 17 days after her initial injury on June 7. Cohen prioritizes this wider window – which also was used on Rickea Jackson, who underwent surgery a month after tearing the ACL in her left knee in May – as a crucial step to prepare athletes’ bodies for recovery.

An ACL injury sends the body into shock, resulting in swelling and a severely limited range of motion. Vandersloot felt her leg enter a complete shutdown. Her quadriceps muscle would not fire. Her leg refused to bend. She spent weeks working with Cohen coaxing basic movement and flexibility out of her major muscles.

After surgery, the real work began. Vandersloot and Cohen set a goal to return roughly a year after her surgery date of June 24. The guard returned on June 26. The 367 days between those dates were occupied with a grueling, exhaustive program that required more than eight hours a day in the gym.

Some athletes struggle to fill their time during a yearlong rehabilitation cycle. But that wasn’t a challenge for Vandersloot, whose daughter, Jana, was born in April 2025 barely two months before her injury. Her recovery days lasted longer than an average training camp day. So Vandersloot quickly fell into a strict routine.

Hit the gym. Push herself in the weight room. Ground herself at home with her wife, Sky great Allie Quigley, and their daughter.

“It was a simple life,” Vandersloot said with a laugh.

Over the last year, coach Tyler Marsh never saw Vandersloot waver. But ACL recovery is a long process. It’s boring. Monotonous. Vandersloot spent weeks at a time attempting to regain basic range of motion that any athlete spends most of their life taking for granted.

Marsh often joined Vandersloot for stretches of her recovery workouts or put up shots with her in the gym at Sachs Recreation Center. They talked about basketball and parenthood. Mostly, Marsh focused on communicating a simple message: The Sky didn’t have any doubts about Vandersloot.

“For me and our staff’s standpoint, it was all about how to continue to be positive around her, knowing the little milestones that she had in front of her to try to get back to this point,” Marsh said. “If we could show the confidence that we had in her getting back, then hopefully that would translate into even more confidence within herself.”

Sometime at the start of June, Vandersloot stopped hesitating.

Every step of her rehabilitation followed the timeline Cohen set out. Still, soreness and stiffness lingered during a shortened preseason and training camp. Vandersloot knew that her strength had returned, that she could trust her knee. But that logic didn’t always reach her body, which felt hesitant as she worked through drills and began light contact scrimmages.

And then, all at once, the hitch went away. Vandersloot could sprint and stop and cut and dodge without any nagging hesitation. In the final three weeks before her first game back, the guard began to feel like herself again.

For a veteran in her 16th season, that sense of self requires some redefinition. Vandersloot is unlikely to return to her prior norm of playing close to 30 minutes per game. In Tuesday’s 77-66 win at Phoenix, for example, she logged just 18 minutes while scoring seven points.

Aspects of her physicality – particularly her downhill explosivity – have faded over time. Vandersloot was always a pass-first point guard. Now her game caters toward playmaking through passing more than ever.

But Vandersloot isn’t worried about age. Or time. Yes, she lost a year to this injury. But that just means she needs to do her best to make up for lost time.

“Before my injury, I was still at a point where I could do everything that my mind wanted me to do,” Vandersloot said. “If I put in the work, if I did all the right things, then I could still get it. It’s early and I’m riding on the high of that adrenaline right now. But I still believe that.”