Gritty senior’s perseverance reflected in O’Fallon girls’ rise to top national rank
The O’Fallon Township High School girls soccer team is the Class 3A state champion and No. 1-ranked team nationally because of things such as perseverance, persistence, toughness, and, yeah, talent.
Nobody on the champion Panthers exuded more of those qualities than senior midfielder Taegan Benson. She missed the first two-and-a-half years of her high school career because of two torn ACLs that each required full reconstruction, not to mention other cartilage tears that, all told, required six surgeries.
Benson, though, wouldn’t let all that beat her. By the middle of her junior year, she was back on the pitch.
And how’s this for a way to go out on her career as a Panther: In the dying seconds of the first overtime of O’Fallon’s Class 3A championship game last week against Naperville North, Benson got the primary assist on the game-winning goal, scored by senior Allie Tredway in an eventual 1-0 double-OT win.
All the previous tears, all the previous pain and frustration from those missed years were replaced by hugs of joy. Unfortunately, female athletes tend to suffer higher rates of serious knee injuries than males, but Benson hopes her story can serve as an inspiration to others if it happens to them, too.
“Going through ACL injuries can be a lonely experience for young female athletes,” Benson said. “I hope my story will reach young ladies going through it and give them hope that one can recover and get in the game again.”
Her injuries started right before her freshman year, and by her junior year she knew previous dreams of playing soccer at a Division I school were likely over. But, while she will only play club or intramural soccer there, Benson will still be attending a DI school this fall. She’ll enroll at the University of Tennessee on a full academic scholarship and plans on majoring in engineering.
Her mother, Amanda, got a little emotional when talking about the ordeal she went through but overcame in the end.
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“I know she has a tendency to kind of minimize what she’s been through, but what she went through in soccer is not your typical experience,” Amanda said. “Years and years of getting reinjured, and having more surgeries and going to physical therapy and then getting back on the field to perform at a high level. I mean, you know, it’s just awesome.”
Panthers coach Justin Judiscak will have another strong team coming back in 2026, with key players such as Delaney Nieroda, Ava Dannenbrink, Lyla Twenhafel, and Amanda Fischer returning. Nieroda’s sister, Claire, led the Panthers this season, averaging a goal and 1.1 assists per match as a senior. Tredway also averaged one goal and half an assist per game, while Benson averaged 0.4 assists per game. None was bigger, obviously, than the final one.
“A player on Naperville cleared it out of their half, and (Dannenbrink), she headed it back into their half,” Benson said. “I was thinking I needed to settle it down, so I brought it down and just knew I wanted to go forward with the ball because I knew we were almost done with the first overtime. I started turning and cut back from the defender to free up some space and then I saw Allie, and she made an amazing turn and shot.”
The Panthers had previously won state titles in 2023 and 2021, but this was the first Benson could count as a contributor.
“There are so many seniors I’d played with since I was so young, and we all worked so hard to get there, it was just inspiring. It didn’t feel real for a long time,” said Benson, who credited physical therapist specialists Gabby Griffin and Hana Bernardson, part of the Young Athletes Center in Missouri, for their work in her recovery. “I just couldn’t believe that we actually won state. It was definitely hard, missing all that time, because most of my friends and whole social life was soccer. So, to share that moment with those same friends in a championship celebration was just incredible and I’m lucky.”
This story was originally published June 13, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
