She hit the dirt with a dull thwack, pain riding up her tailbone and tears streaming down her face. The game continued as the soccer ball ricocheted downfield, her team scored and the crowd cheered.
Suddenly the clapping and shouting stopped as the injured player lay on the ground for several minutes, nobody attending her.
At other schools, a trainer would have run on the field with a medical bag and ice. But not here, not at Principia College, where faith meets sports and where Christian Science is on display on fields of play.
Fans and teammates grew contemplative. Some prayed silently while all watched respectfully as Jennai Taylor, a shaken-up star of Principia's women's soccer team, finally rose from the ground.
"I knew they were keeping a good thought for me, for the teams, for the game," Taylor said.
Without doctors, training rooms, nutritional supplements and medication, this private liberal arts college with an enrollment of some 550 students fields 17 intercollegiate teams in NCAA Division III. Four out of 10 students play varsity sports.
Tiny Principia even plays football, with a 25-man team, barely enough for practice let alone games.
Principia's teams provide the wider public a window into Christian Science and the practice of spiritual healing. It also enables the religion's followers to reach out to others and break down such stereotypes that they stand in stark opposition to modern medicine.
"We're not a bunch of wackos who are doctor haters," said Mike Barthelmess, the head football coach. "We're just a bunch of people who trust God and follow the teachings of Jesus to the letter."
With some 2,000 churches in more than 130 countries, Christian Science followers use religious faith, prayer and practice to deal with illness.
Mary Baker Eddy founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, in the 1870s and published "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Eddy's book, along with the Bible, remains a standard work of the faith and is never far from the reach of students or teachers at Principia.
Christian Scientists believe they experience a reinstatement of the healing methods used by Jesus. Followers have sometimes found themselves in conflict with civic authorities, particularly over the issue of providing medical treatment to minors. But Christian Scientists emphasize they do not prohibit medical treatment.
Principia, itself, was at the center of a public health crisis in 1985 when more than 100 students came down with measles, and three died. At the time, state health officials offered vaccinations to Principia's students and more than 300 accepted.
To visit the bucolic campus now, to drive up the tree-lined main drive in the height of the fall, is to go back in time, to a place tucked away from the rest of modern America. A Bernard Maybeck-designed English-style village, the campus sits on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, some 30 miles from St. Louis.
At 10 a.m. daily, campus life comes to a halt, and students and teachers pray and think for 30 minutes. There are no classes at lunch hour.
The stiffest drink served in the campus pub is Starbucks coffee, decaffeinated.
Aspirin is most definitely not on sale at the bookstore.
"Sometimes a Christian Scientist will invest some serious time in dealing with a physical ailment by prayerful means," said the school's president, George D. Moffett. "The reason a Christian Scientist will do that is that we're trying to get to the roots of the problems."
Moffett said Christian Science healing is "incidental to the larger matter of growing spiritually."
For Moffett, sport is a "character building activity," completely in keeping with the school's mission to help students grow intellectually, spiritually, physically, socially and morally.
"People sometimes wonder if you had an injury why would you rely on Christian Science?" Moffett said. "If you've had a lifetime of successful reliance on Christian Science it's the most natural thing to turn to Christian Science in time of need. The surprising thing would be not to turn to Christian Science. If a student feels that it is necessary to get medical attention we would never do anything to discourage that."
Around here, sports medicine takes on a whole new meaning.
First aid is prayer.
Ice for an injury is generally shunned.
There is no mint-like smell of athletic rubs in locker rooms because none are used.
Players can tape their ankles since tape is considered part of the athletic equipment, coaches said.
A trainer attends home games - but that is to accommodate the visitors.
And there is also an ambulance at home football games to adhere to intercollegiate rules.
But mostly, there is prayer and introspection.
"I love the fact we don't have so much emphasis on the body, this material medical stuff. It's just so much more freeing," said Taylor, the tough soccer player who rose from the turf after her tailbone injury.
A 19-year-old sophomore from Claremont, Calif., Taylor attended a private high school where she kept her religion private. If she got hurt in a game, she gently fended off attempts to provide ice or take an aspirin.
Prayerful thought, she said, can work wonders.
"What the sports world needs is just less fear," she said. "There is so much fear of pulling muscles, tearing ligaments. Here, at Principia, we try to get rid of that fear."
They do it through prayer and togetherness.
It can be seen before practices, when teams gather and a player offers a thought, often a reading from Eddy's book.
At a recent football practice, Steve Crump, a nose tackle, told the team, "since we're all brothers we all love each other. And working hard is like a labor of love."
The team joined hands and shouted a single word: "Love."
"People have this expectation that we're doing something magical and mystical. But we don't," said Lee Ellis, the women's soccer team coach. "There is not as much of an emphasis on the physical here. The players are not spending their afternoons getting ice treatments. We pray about it. We don't lay hands or make funny sounds."
Dave Motzer, the trainer who is brought in for games, said he does not see much difference in the physical abilities or mental preparation of Principia athletes as opposed to others.
"But when there is an injury, then they rely on prayer," he said. "I think it's fabulous that they do it. But when they go down (with an injury) it's hard for me not to run out there. But I have to give them the respect of their religion."
Motzer said there is only one thing he will not compromise on - if there is a life-threatening situation, he will provide treatment without asking.
"I haven't seen too many sick athletes up here, to be honest," he said. "I've seen athletes from Principia injured and they get in a meditative state. No whining or yelling. They're very calm, quiet, almost reverential. You may see someone put a hand on them, pray with them. It's very individual and quiet."
"Every single game the head coach of the other team will come up to me and say, `how do you do it? I have 15 guys on crutches?' You try to be nice, try to be humble without wearing your religion on your sleeve," Barthelmess said.
"Our religion teaches us that we don't lack. We have greater things we're capable of. It's an approach to man how we look at ourselves as mortals that is different ... We see this existence as not being real. And that just freaks everyone out. Matter is insignificant. Everything is consciousness and thought."
But football is still football and Principia's athletes want to hit hard and win. Yet with an undersized, undermanned team, wins are hard to come by.
Still, what is unusual is that no one on this year's team can remember the last time a player missed a game because of injury.
A few at Principia do find themselves facing surgery.
A six-inch scar on the outer part of her right knee and three circular marks in the skin are tell-tale signs senior women's soccer player Devon Neale has undergone several bouts of surgery.
After tearing her knee as a freshman and then a sophomore, Neale underwent major reconstructive surgery, followed by arthroscopic surgery.She said there were some on campus who questioned her motivations."A student said it to me, `how could you do this?'" Neale said. "Various faculty would say, `you don't need to do this.' It was never out of maliciousness. It was out of a sense of love."
But for Neale, the surgery was a necessary though difficult step toward physical rehabilitation. Even after the procedures, she found her knee could not be completely flexed.A doctor told her she would never play high-profile sports again."He suggested golf," Neale said. "I hate golf."
Neale said through prayer, and practice, she has regained the flexibility in her knee.And she is back playing soccer, clashing with opponents on defense, falling to the ground and getting right back up."We don't practice Christian Science to make us better soccer players," she said. "We practice soccer to make us better Christian Scientists."