Craig Rusin finally has the chance to show what he can do.
After missing all of his freshman season and almost all of his sophomore season with injuries, Rusin is the top scorer for Lake Central, which won its first Class 3A sectional championship since 2019 on Saturday.
The junior forward/midfielder has been savoring his first full season.
“I have high expectations,” Rusin said. “I don’t want to sound cocky, but I feel like I was supposed to be doing good.”
Indeed, Lake Central coach Jereme Rainwater hasn’t exactly been surprised by Rusin, who recorded team highs of 13 goals and eight assists as the Indians (11-7-1) won a share of the Duneland Athletic Conference title and advanced to a regional semifinal at Portage (14-5) on Wednesday.
“He’s as talented as anyone,” Rainwater said. “When the ball is on his foot, good things happen.”
It was Rusin’s right foot that sidelined him for all but four games last year. After he sat out his freshman season with a torn meniscus in his left knee — a relatively straightforward injury — he suffered a broken toe twice and had four stress fractures in his first metatarsal, a manifestation of what ultimately was diagnosed as an autoimmune disease.
He visited multiple doctors, traveling to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, seeking answers.
“The autoimmune disease, it’s in my whole body, but it was affecting my right foot in my bone marrow,” Rusin said. “My bones overreact to trauma. I was having a lot of stress fractures in my foot — over the season, my foot just kept breaking, it just kept happening. Coming back from that was pretty hard.
“We don’t know what triggered it. We don’t know why it started happening. But my foot couldn’t handle the stress.”
By late spring and into the summer, Rusin had healed, and the situation seemed to be under control. He hasn’t experienced any major issues this season.
“It was a problem for six or seven months, but now I’m pretty much good,” he said. “Sometimes I feel a little something in my feet, and then it’s gone. It’s not as big of a deal anymore.
“I’m just trying not to think about it and it won’t come back. I try to forget about it. I feel like the more I think about it and the more I’m scared about it, the more problems I’ll have.”
Rusin has focused on continuing to produce at a high level, whether as a central attacking midfielder or as a right winger after the team switched formations toward the end of the regular season. He scored two goals in a 4-0 win against Morton in the sectional final.
Next up is DAC rival Portage in the regional semifinal. Lake Central, which reached the state championship game the last time it won a sectional, prevailed 4-1 in the teams’ regular-season game on Sept. 7.
“I had a lot of time off that obviously I wish I was playing soccer,” Rusin said. “It was hard. But now that I’m back and playing well, it’s great.
“It’s just my hunger and my passion. I feel like the team really counts on me, and I want to be a player that they can count on.”
