Lucy Adamopoulos was on her death bed in 2014 — now she’s realised her soccer dream for the Lady Reds
NAMED in Adelaide United’s W-League squad for the first time this month, Lucy Adamopoulos has made a miraculous comeback from two horrific accidents — the first a serious car crash, the second a freak mishap that left her impaled on a stake.
LUCY Adamopoulos has twice cheated  death — sustaining  serious injuries in a car crash and then, just two years later, being impaled on a garden stake.
“I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be alive,’’ Lucy, 23, of Ashford, says.
Now she’s realising her soccer dream as part of the Adelaide United W-League squad, which plays its first game of the season against Melbourne Victory, at Coopers Stadium, today.
It is a far cry from the nightmare that almost claimed her life on March 1, 2014, when a railing she was leaning on broke and she fell from a raised deck on to the stake, at North Adelaide.
“It went straight through my pelvic region,” she told the Sunday Mail.
“I’ve just gone ‘I can’t move’. I was in extreme pain, I’ve gone ‘ouch, ouch, ouch’.
“Someone grabbed me and called an ambulance. The stake went through my buttocks and, as I was rolled to the side, it came out.”
Lucy was taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where she was placed in a medically induced coma while surgeons operated.
“I had quite a bit of damage to my pelvic region. It was pulverised, it collapsed, all my muscles were lost,” she says.
“I was in a coma for two days and I had a few operations to help my body get back to normal. It took a long time for me to walk again.”
Lucy’s movements were restricted after coming out of the coma.
Her health improved rapidly over the next five days but thoughts of that fateful fall came rushing back as she relived the calamity.
“The doctors said I could have been paralysed and unable to have children,’’ she says.
“Where the stake hit me I was so unlucky but I’m also so lucky to be able to function normally.
“I can do everything fine; I had a full recovery. It was a freak accident.
“It hasn’t affected me mentally.”
Incredibly, after 10 days in hospital, Lucy was discharged and went to live with her grandparents Sofia and George Adamopoulos.
Her immediate reaction was to get through life day by day. Soccer, the sport she had lived for since she started playing the game as a six-year-old, was far from her thoughts.
But it was her support network that understood soccer would give her the will to overcome the major setback — the second of her young life.
Just two years earlier, on April 19, 2012, a drunk driver had crashed her SUV head-on into Lucy’s car at the intersection of Nottage Tce and North East Rd, Medindie.
Lucy sustained a fractured skull and was forced to miss the women’s soccer season.
Her determination to return to the soccer field was tempered with anxiety but, remarkably, two months and 11 days after the fall she was back — and in a big way.
“The first game — that was the best feeling. I played in the reserves for West Adelaide,” she says.
“I ended up playing against Sturt-Marion and bagging four goals in my comeback game.
“We ended up winning 4-3 and it was a great day to remember.”
Lucy, a business analyst at Bendigo Bank, in the CBD, has not looked back.
She fully recovered to have an outstanding 2015, when she scored 45 goals as a striker for West Adelaide’s league team.
That form prompted scouts to invite her to a trial for Adelaide United’s women’s team, which ended with a place in the squad.
Her debut has hit a small hurdle with shin splints ruling her out of action for four weeks but that’s nothing compared to the trauma she has previously endured.
“It’s a great year to be involved,’’ she said.
“Adelaide United is all under one banner which is amazing and you can really tell the professionalism of it.
“Just being all together and we’re getting paid now which is incredible.
“It’s not why I’m doing it, though. I’m playing for the passion of the game.”
Lucy’s family has sporting pedigree — father Harry was a former West Adelaide Hellas soccer star and Aussie rules player, coached by Malcolm Blight in Woodville’s under-18s, in the early 1980s.
Mum Nat Harrison was also fully immersed in soccer, being a former host of community TV show Full On Football following in the footsteps of her father, Wally Tkachuk.
Ukraine-born Tkachuk was a former chairman of the SA soccer federation, a founder of USC Lion soccer club and was inducted in Football Federation SA’s Hall of Fame.
Lucy’s natural sporting talent has shone through from a young age.
“I played at Adelaide Olympic, playing with the boys’ under-9s, under-11s and under-13s and they kicked me out after taking the boys’ spots,” she says.
“Having that experience with the boys has made me a completely different player compared to the normal girls that play with women all the time.
You have a different outlook on the game.”
Lucy also harbours a dream of being another potential “cross-code girl”, revealing she had enjoyed played Aussie rules for Seaton Ramblers and representing SA at under-18 level.
“AFL was definitely an option if I didn’t get into United,’’ she says. “I’m an on-baller and sometimes play at half forward.”
She credits her family for helping her get to where she is today.
“I had great people around me and that got me through the tough time in hospital,’’ Lucy says.
“It was overwhelming, everyone wanted me to get better and that may have affected them more because they couldn’t do anything about how I was.
“It was full on and every little thing was positive and even to this day I have not thought once a bad thing about it. Touch wood, I hope it won’t affect me later on.
“But it made me appreciate life is so short, you can go any day. Every day is a blessing.”