After receiving a scholarship offer, Makaylie Moore, a 17-year-old junior and athlete at Thomas Jefferson High School, committed to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, one of the nation’s top schools for women’s soccer.

“It was really awesome, honestly,” Moore said of the day she received the news. “I’m really excited. I was just waiting because that was the school I really wanted to go to since I was little.”

Moore nearly led her varsity high school team to the postseason last year and played in nationals with her Eastside Football Club team. Playing the midfielder and forward positions, Moore scored nearly half of Jefferson’s goals this year. However, she was forced to sit out of the last games of the season to recover from surgery on her right shoulder after an injury she sustained two years ago.

Moore was a freshman at the time of the injury. She was dribbling the ball on the field when another player crashed into her from behind, causing her to fall forward and dislocate her shoulder.

“It came out of its socket,” Moore said. “After a few seconds, it just went back in and I didn’t realize what had happened. I just continued to play with my shoulder popped out.”

An MRI scan on the shoulder was inconclusive, and Moore didn’t know she had torn her right labrum, the ring of soft tissue that surrounds and stabilizes the socket of the shoulder. She continued playing her sophomore and junior years, ignoring sharp pains that occurred when her shoulder occasionally popped out of its socket.

Moore had her shoulder checked again a few months ago and was told it would not completely heal until she had surgery. She scheduled it as soon as she could, trying to avoid further damage to her shoulder and trying to stay in front of the predicted six-month recovery time. Doing so, hopefully, would leave her ample time to get back in shape before college. For now, Moore can still practice and do drills, but she has to be careful to avoid making contact with other players.

The idea of surgery didn’t frighten Moore, likely because going under the knife for sports injuries has become a fact of her life: she broke her femur and a foot on separate occasions, and she underwent surgery for both.

Moore began playing soccer when she was barely old enough to kick the ball.

“She started when she was four, and she played before that just dribbling the ball around and we’ve just enjoyed watching her – her intensity and her desire to compete,” said Tami Moore, Makaylie’s mother.

“Makaylie is a champion at heart who always plays her best at the biggest and most important moments,” said Tom Bialek, the Director of Coaching at Eastside Football Club. “She competes exceptionally hard and never gives into adversity. When the games get difficult the team pulls together, and Makaylie leads by example.”

Moore also plays on her school’s tennis team, but she’ll be unable to compete during her remaining three months of recovery time despite being named varsity captain. Last year she served the ball underhand to prevent her shoulder from popping out.

Moore has played with Eastside Football Club for five years. The team won state cups the past two years and competed at nationals in 2013, placing third among the best girls’ youth soccer teams in the nation. Moore was one of the top scorers at nationals.

Thomas Jefferson’s girls soccer team nearly made it to the state championship tournament in 2014. They were defeated in a close game and did not advance to the state competition.

“I remember that game so well,” Moore said. “I scored in the first five minutes and we were up the entire game. It was 1-0. It was the last minute and the ref gave them a free kick and they scored. It went into overtime and we lost.”

Aside from sports, Moore’s visits with physical therapists in the past have inspired her to pursue a career in the field. She plans to study kinesiology at BYU.

“I’ve gone through a lot of rehab and I thinks it’s really cool how they help people, especially athletes, get back to where they were,” Moore said. “It’s also really interesting and a way to meet a lot of new people.”

Moore’s mother, father and two older siblings attended BYU before her.

Jane Koh is a University of Washington student in the News Lab program.