Thomas Campbell Blog #6: Experiencing acupuncture

Thomas Campbell is a senior forward on the UNC Greensboro men's soccer team. This year will be different for the three-year starter, however. Campbell, UNCG's leading scorer last season, will be sitting out his redshirt season while recovering from a knee injury he suffered last spring. Each Friday, Campbell will blog about the Spartans' soccer season, his teammates, his classes and his journey back to the soccer pitch in the rehab process. Today is the sixth installment.

Welcome back everyone,

This week has been very busy. Last Saturday, we were on the road at Furman. We played a good game, but ended up losing 3-2 in double OT. The game went back and forth and they ended up scoring a goal to win it in the second OT.

I started back up with my rehab on Tuesday morning. My leg was a little sore and still had some swelling in it, so we called and made an acupuncture appointment for Wednesday morning to see if that would reduce the swelling.

This week was a little different because we play Tuesday and Saturday, not Wednesday and Saturday. Tuesday night we played Wofford at home. It was a decent game without many chances. We started out pretty slow and got a stern talking to at halftime by coach Brittsan. (I won't share the choice of words.) We ended winning in OT on a great goal by Tebatso Manyama. It was a much needed win and brought our SoCon record to 1-2-0

On Wednesday, like I said earlier, I had an acupuncture appointment at 7am. It was my first acupuncture experience so I was a little hesitant going into it. Tuesday before the game, we measured my joint-line on my knee to compare to my healthy knee. By doing so, it shows how much swelling you have in your knee. My left knee read 38cm and my right knee read 36cm. The appointment was kind of weird, but it wasn't bad at all. I was there for about an hour and left feeling very good. Later in the day I did my rehab and it still felt great. I went through my day and went back to the athletic training room later in the afternoon to take another measurement to see if the acupuncture had done anything. The measurement after the acupuncture was 35cm on my left knee so I lost 3cm within 12 hours. It was amazing how much the swelling decreased. Because of it so I am going to go back next week and see if it will work again.

The stash update: As of last week it was on Ryan Davis, who struggled to even grow one. I believe it is now on to Matt Betts, who is going to look like an absolute joke. Today at training I heard Nirav Kadam saying he was growing his out, so it looks like he will be next.

Our next game is Saturday against High Point at home. It not a conference game but we would like to win to continue the winning streak and keep working towards getting our record back to .500. We have some injuries to our lineup at the moment, so hopefully those guys will be back and ready to play by Saturday because we could use them.

The win Tuesday was a good win to start building on. We have been up and down so far this season so hopefully we can level the ship and start our climb up the win column.

Till next time ... au revoir.

Thomas Campbell, #7, UNCG Men's Soccer

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