It would have been easy for DePaul rising junior Bina Saipi to walk away from the sport she loves. After suffering a sprained ACL, two stress fractures in her femur and a torn labrum that required surgery, many people probably wouldn’t have blamed her if she did.

But not Saipi, a New Trier graduate. She wasn’t ready to give up the sport she loved so much, that she grew up playing and had a lot of success in.

On May 7, after 18 months away from the field, Saipi rejoined her DePaul teammates on the practice field. 

The journey started in the fall of 2016, Saipi’s freshman year, during a game against Villanova on October 9. The Wilmette native, who had seen action in all 13 of the squad’s previous games, including six starts, went down with an ACL injury after playing only 11 minutes. 

“I’d come back in the winter, and mid-winter, I found out I had a stress fracture in my femur,” Saipi said. “Then, I’d already had that for the rest of the spring, pretty much, and then summer came along, and I was getting similar pain, but I kind of just pushed through the pain all summer.

“The first day of pre-season last year, they sent me to the doctor right away. I had another stress fracture in a little different spot, but the same leg. Pretty much the same area, so I rehabbed that for about three months.”

But, unfortunately for Saipi, the injuries weren’t done.

“November-ish of 2017. I still was having some pain, so they sent me back to the doctor, and I did an arthrogram, which is the MRI where they inject dye into the joint, just to see if anything’s torn, or anything,” she said. “In the next few days, I went into physical therapy, and they said, ‘The doctor wants to call you.’ 

“I was like, ‘Is it bad? Honestly, tell me if it’s bad.’ They were like, ‘We don’t know, but typically, when the doctor wants to speak to you, players, it’s ‘cause they found something,’ and the doctor called me, and she told me that my labrum was torn in my hip. A few weeks later, I had surgery on that, and ever since then, I’ve been rehabbing back from hip surgery.”

Saipi, who said she had never had any really serious injuries in the past, mainly sprained ankles and such, said that while the doctors aren’t sure whether the labrum was torn the entire time and is what caused the stress fractures, they believe that was most likely the cause.

“At first, obviously, I was upset. I was like, ‘Why does this keep happening to me?,’” she said. “I didn’t know what was in store for me for the next pretty much eight, nine months of rehab, but I was excited to have a solution to this problem that was taking my dreams away. I just tried to look at it in a positive way, and be like, ‘This is going to be fixed, and gone forever.’”

Hours and days and weeks of rehab would frustrate the midfielder, but she never thought about stepping away from the game. 

“I guess knowing that things happen for a reason,” she said for why she stayed with soccer. “Just realizing that you’re so close to the goals that you have, and to walk away from it all, I’m not a quitter. I’m never going to be a quitter.”

In March, something changed everything for Saipi and her outlook.

“After my grandfather had passed away, in late March, something like a switch turned on, or something flipped, because everything started going my way, after that,” Saipi said. “I was feeling a lot better.”

So in April, Saipi sat down with the physical therapists and made a timeline for when she could return. A return to running started in mid-April, a five to six week process whereas just the first days, you run for 30 seconds, walk for four-and-a-half minutes, and do that six times. Then, the next time, you do one minute running, four minute walking.

Then on May 7th, she walked into physical therapy and she heard the words she’d been wanting to hear for a long time.

“My physical therapist was like, ‘All right, you can go play today.’” she said. “I was like, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Yeah, put your cleats on, go out, and do 15 minutes of technical.’”

Her physical therapist wasn’t the only one that was excited to have her back on the field. Adrian Walker, Saipi’s roommate, best friend and former club teammate, was thrilled to see her step onto the field.

“Honestly, I felt like I wanted to cry,” Walker said. “I felt that because I had been with her step-by-step, I had almost gone through the injury too.

“Playing soccer is Bina’s ultimate dream. She said if she could do anything, she’d be playing soccer. So watching her be able to touch a ball again after over a year was incredible. It was emotional because she had been waiting so long.”

“I was just excited to be back with my friends and my teammates, and my coaches were happy and excited, and my trainers, and everyone was just happy for me,” Saipi said. “It just raised me to this big smile around my face, and I was happy, and I didn’t have long to work hard, so that 10 minutes I was playing, or the eight minute drill that I was doing, soccer makes me happy, and just to be out there kicking a ball, and trying to get my touchback was exciting. I was thrilled.”

After getting so much playing time her freshman year, Saipi knows what it takes to be successful on the pitch at the collegiate level and what she needs to do to get back to that level this season.

“I want to be back. I want to be an impact player. I want to start. I want to score goals. I want to help my team score goals,” she said. “I want to win a conference championship. I want to go on to the NCAA someday, but I think it’s very possible for me to play this season, and be everything I want to be for this team, and that I know I can be. 

“It’s kind of weird, ‘cause I’ve never been this confident, or spoken about myself this highly, but after going through what I’ve been through, I know what I’m capable of. I know I’m capable of helping our team be successful this season.”

Saipi said that other than her family, trainers, coaches and teammates, the one person who was really there for her throughout the whole process was Walker.

“She was there for me every second of the day, and would just sit there and listen, or she never was upset with me, or I don’t know, she was just the greatest friend, and still to this day, I don’t know if I could have done this training without her, because she was there to motivate me and push me, and make sure I got the job done, because I don’t know, she just reminded me of how much she loved playing with me all the time, and that just kept me going,” Saipi said.

For Walker, it was all about seeing her longtime friend happy and be back on the field.

“As she found out the various injuries, I tried to be there to listen to her talk and air her frustrations out because she didn’t want to be a negative Nelly to anybody, she didn’t want to see like she was a burden,” Walker said. “I tried to be that person who would be there and when she was sad and wanted to cry, I wanted to be there for her.”

Saipi, who is a business management major focusing on student resources, still isn’t cleared to return to action but hopes that will soon be the case.  

“Honestly. I just want to play some soccer.”

Saipi would go on the start all 38 of DePaul’s games during the 2018 and 2019 seasons. The rising-redshirt senior scored three goals in 2019 and dished out two assists in 2018 and has one more season to fulfill her eligibility.