Angel Citys Sydney Leroux feeling good, nears return after ankle surgery

Sydney Leroux lounged in the player’s box at BMO Stadium during Angel City FC’s preseason friendly against Liga MX Femenil side Club América. She looked cool in a pair of Bruins blue and yellow Nike Dunk Low, a nod to her national champion Alma mater, UCLA, who was honored at halftime. Notably, she had Dunks on both feet instead of sporting a walking boot on her right foot.

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“I’m not a patient person,” Leroux said as she watched her current team race around to the cheers of 15,000 fans. “I want to go 100 mph 100% of the time.”

Despite this description of herself, Leroux is an immediately friendly presence, the kind of person who casually nudges your shoulder when making a comment despite having met you 10 minutes prior. 

It’s funny to Leroux that people she’s close to now didn’t think she was friendly at first. One guilty party: teammate and Angel City captain Ali Riley. 

“She always says she thought I was a b—-,” Leroux said, bursting with laughter. “And I’m like, what are you talking about? I’m not a b—-. I’m so nice, Ali Riley. Now that’s, like, one of my closest friends. We love each other.”

Leroux had to cheer on Riley and the rest of her teammates from the sidelines against Club América. The Angel City forward underwent surgery for a micro-fracture of her talus, one of the small bones in the ankle, last summer — in her words, “a really weird bone to have a fracture.” 

“I thought it was just a regular sprain,” she said. “So I continued to play on it for a while. And I really just waited until adrenaline hit, and then I would go out there and play.” 

It was an injury that had followed her from Orlando, one she had attempted to manage at Angel City while still playing in considerable pain. But there’s no more playing through pain for Leroux now as she’s experienced a bit of an evolution through the injury and recovery. 

“I think now listening to my body is really important. I’m also not getting any younger,” she said. “Younger me would probably go into every single tackle 100%. And now I just am a little smarter. Like, do I need to go flying out at the keeper? I can wait.

“I’m more patient than I used to be, and I think that the game has evolved and the game makes you patient. So yeah, I guess Sydney five years ago is a lot different than the one I am now. But I still go hard. I still play 100. But it’s just different. It’s with more patience.”

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Leroux was told during her diagnosis that the fracture could be a career-ending injury if she didn’t take care of it, something that hadn’t even crossed her mind until then. The talus is in a difficult spot, where there’s not a lot of blood flow to the bone. 

“I remember just like going to bed at night and being like, ‘Is this what I’m gonna have to live with for the rest of my life,” she said, remembering living with the pain. “And not only as a soccer player but as a mom who enjoys being out there with my kids and playing and doing all the things. I would step on something and it would just send shooting pains up my leg. And I was like, there’s something going on here. This is not normal.”

Leroux said she hadn’t been playing like herself because she couldn’t even give 50%. She was only able to force herself to perform so much. Eventually, the injury started winning out.

“It was like, I need to figure this out because I know something’s wrong. And like, I don’t really want to admit it,” Leroux described the experience. “But something is wrong and something’s holding me back and I don’t know what that is.”

Finally, Leroux mentioned her ankle felt “a little sticky” and asked for a shot to relieve the pain. Instead, she had an MRI taken. 

“It was game over,” she said. 

What followed was surgery and rehab in a boot from Aug. 13 until Dec. 28. Leroux rattled off the dates of her life in a boot without hesitation. The surgery provided more than relief from the immediate problem.

Leroux credited her medical care team, including her surgeon, someone she’s known for over 10 years, for helping her evolve. She said being able to trust a doctor, both in their medical advice and their attitude towards you as their patient, is crucial to recovery. 

“She knows me and I know her and she knows that she’s gonna have to like, reel me back,” Leroux says, joking about her tendency to want to get where she’s going right now, no waiting. 

“It originally was like exploratory surgery, because we didn’t see anything on the MRI,” Leroux explained. “So when she went in, she was able to kind of dig around the back and pull up quite a mess. So yeah, I would have had to have the surgery no matter what. And I was happy that I was honest, for the first time in my career, about how I feel.”

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Before the injury, Leroux was raring to go, especially after her trade to an Angel City team in need of goals after losing striker Christen Press to injury. An in-form Leroux would have been instrumental in their offense. But she only got 182 minutes in three games before her ankle forced her out. Proper recovery requires patience. Lots and lots of patience, which doesn’t come naturally. But she stuck to the recovery plan.

“It’s been a very long road and very weird because I’ve never really been injured before. I just had (sic) been pregnant. Unfortunately, I don’t have a baby to show for this injury,” she said, laughing. 

Leroux’s two children, Cassius and Roux, floated around the box at BMO Stadium playing while their mom and grandma watched the preseason friendly. They both take after Leroux, especially with their intensity and energy. 

“Cassius definitely has the soccer aspect of going 100 and Roux goes 100 in her own little ways. And it’s definitely not in any athletic ability, but it’s just like her little personality and her attitude is on 100 all the time,” Leroux said, with what sounded like a combination of exasperation and pride.  

Roux, she thinks, will be the more stubborn of her children when she gets older and is already bracing herself for some tempestuous teen years. 

“No one’s ever gonna tell her something she doesn’t want to do and I love that about her,” Leroux said. “It makes her difficult in the best way. Because I always want her to do what she wants to do, and she’s done that since birth. She is very much her own little person. And I love that so much.”

That’s another Leroux hallmark: honesty about how parenting is sometimes a really strange, difficult, unglamorous job. Her social media is filled with stories about how her children have damaged various items or made messes and how she’s bearing the stress with both a smile and a headache. 

“I think honesty is so important,” she said of posting about parenting. “Nothing is perfect. There’s a lot of things that aren’t really for social media. Social media is pretend for a lot of it. And I feel like I always want to be honest, and I always want to stay true to myself and I feel like I’ve done a really good job with that.”

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Leroux has evolved on social media like she has on the field.

“I used to reply to everything,” she said. “I mean, my mom does. She’s always, always had my back and I’m like mom, ‘Relax. Who are these people? Who cares?’ I’m always like, ‘Delete it! Delete it, mom!’”

And while Leroux acknowledged that there are many wonderful things about social media, like its ability to connect people, its inauthenticity also goes both ways. 

“There are a lot of things that I stick up for and that I believe in that not everyone believes in and that’s fine, right? But never in my life have I gone on someone’s social media and ever said mean s— to someone,” she said. “Social media gives everyone this voice that they think they can have, which is not real. Again, it’s fake. Because you’re not going to say all these awful things or be racist or be homophobic or do all these things in real life. And if you are, then you would probably get knocked out.”

So Leroux tries to keep it real, not hiding that sometimes she’s a little frazzled or frustrated. There’s plenty of joy, too. For every post about how one of her children has broken something, there are five more celebrating how happy they are. 

“I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done and being able to have the kids and have them watch me do what I love and have them watch me chase the dreams that I have,” she said.

And now that she’s back on both feet, the path back to the field is much closer. She’s not training yet but she’s working on running again, and she’s kicking balls around (while wearing an ankle brace) in her backyard with Cassius.

“I’m feeling good,” she said. “I finally had my 16-week MRI, which is what we wanted to wait for to make sure everything healed properly. Things are looking good, so I’m able to progress now … It’s been a long time. And being without pain has been really nice.”

(Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports)

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