Bernstein, Emory Women’s Team, Eye Postseason

Emory senior Emma Bernstein has been playing soccer since 2006, but the two most important dates of her career span the past year.

First, there was the fateful afternoon of Sept. 28, 2024, when the San Juan Capistrano, Calif., native was streaking across the field to cut off a passing lane during a mid-season scrimmage. It was a sudden burst of motion that, by Bernstein’s tongue-in-cheek estimate, she makes a hundred times every game. But this time was quite different as the Emory University forward heard her knee pop, immediately crumpling to the ground. The subsequent diagnosis of a torn ACL and meniscus loomed as a death knell of her junior season and with a months-long recovery ahead, her final season at Emory was potentially in jeopardy.

“It’s a soccer player’s worst nightmare to tear their ACL,” reflected Bernstein.

For a scholar-athlete such as Bernstein who had to balance a rigorous pre-med courseload — not to mention a part-time job doing clinical research work and student programming council activities — with the impending rehab and recovery work, the rocky road ahead presented innumerable obstacles from preparing for surgery to getting used to crutches on rainy afternoons to undergoing many long and monotonous post-surgery exercises so she could acclimate her legs to walking, and eventually, running. But Bernstein, who has been kicking a soccer ball around ever since she was a toddler in her Southern California home, didn’t want this non-contact (though, not uncommon) injury, in an exhibition game no less, to mark the final chapter of her soccer career — even if it meant facing an uncertain future for her senior season.

“I committed to the fact that if I can’t play my whole [senior] season, I at least want to play my senior game just so that I can say, ‘bye,’ to soccer on my own terms and not let an injury say good-bye for me,” said Bernstein, who misses California’s surfing and beaching culture but has thoroughly enjoyed all the BeltLine has to offer as well as Atlanta’s diverse culinary options. “I’m really happy to say that I will be playing my senior game.”

She most certainly will be taking the field for Emory against defending national champion Washington University on the afternoon of Sunday, Oct. 26 — a date that she has been eyeing for over a year now and will, in a sense, bookend her collegiate career, irrespective of how far the Eagles advance in the postseason.

“I definitely have been thinking about that since it’s coming up,” acknowledged Bernstein, who, after graduating from Emory this spring, will be looking ahead to a gap year and then starting medical school in June 2027. “I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m nervous. This is almost like my good-bye to soccer. A lot of emotions. I don’t know if I can really put into words how I’m going to feel, because I’m not exactly sure what that day will bring. But I am excited to go out there and play since it’s been over a year.”

Bernstein, who just got cleared to play on Oct.1, and readily admits she still isn’t 100 percent back to normal health, has yet to play for an Emory team riding a No. 2 national ranking and 11-0-1 record into its final stretch of regular-season action over the next couple weeks. There are three more games before Senior Day, and there’s no telling if she will have her number called. Whereas some college athletes might be utterly frustrated and discouraged to not play the second they are available after a yearlong recuperation, Bernstein is content — even proud — to continue being the ever-supportive teammate to some of her closest friends, who were there for her during her milestone collegiate moments when she recorded her first goal (against Birmingham-Southern in 2023) and assist (against Berry in 2024).

“Last year, I kind of took on this role — just because I couldn’t play — of trying to be positive and almost like a player-coach, just trying to be there for my team as much as possible off the field,” she reflected. “I really appreciated just being there for my team and them being there for me. And if that means that I don’t play, then I’m OK with that — as long as we’re doing OK.

“Even though I was hurt, I still felt like I wanted to come back for them [teammates] because they put in so much work. I just wanted to contribute to my family.”

Bernstein’s determination to play at least one more time in a regular season game is also a reflection of her lifelong unflagging investment in soccer. After using crutches for over a couple months, learning how to walk and run again, and going through 20 hours per week of rehab — while not missing one of her team’s practices — Bernstein was finally able to kick a ball this past April and realistically envision playing in a Division III college soccer game.

Soccer is a sport that has been such a formative part of her life — whether it was being part of a high school state championship squad as a freshman for St. Margaret’s or the game directing her college journey cross-country to Atlanta — and she needed one more taste of high-level competition before moving on to the next stage of her life: studying either pediatric emergency medicine or pediatric anesthesiology.

“I don’t know life without soccer. I think soccer has shaped me into who I am. It has introduced me to some of my best friends in the whole entire world and even people I will consider family until I’m way older.”