On a Sunday afternoon at Trager Stadium, the fifth-ranked Louisville Cardinals field hockey team was getting ready to take on one of their toughest opponents of the season, the Iowa Hawkeyes. The Hawkeyes were ranked sixth in the nation. Louisville played two top 10 teams this season prior to Iowa and lost both of them (No. 1 North Carolina and No. 9 Virginia). However, this time would be different. The Cards would down the Hawkeyes in overtime to take the 3-2 victory. Louisville senior Bethany Russ had one of the two shots on goal in overtime. As the team's leading scorer, she wasn't able to add to her goal stat-line this particular day. She's been a force for the Cards. Last season, she earned all conference honors and earned career highs in goals and points. She's come a long way since 2017. "I had a stress fracture in my L5, in my back. So that was a really hard year for me," Russ said. "I had to sit out for the duration of the season."Day to day tasks like walking to class were a struggle. Despite missing her entire sophomore season, she found there were some advantages. "Sitting out was really hard but I think I learnt a lot from watching that; in turn, helped me with my more tactical game," Russ said. "I can see more of the field better from watching from the sidelines for so long."And the Australian native has been showing off that added field awareness ever since. After missing all of 2017, she led the team in goals in 2018 and is currently leading the team in that category. It's a feat she didn't see coming. "I just wanted to do my best and get back to the best I could be," she said. "I obviously did not expect to be doing so well post-injury. But I did everything that I could from a strength, fitness prospective, from my mind and my mental state."Head coach Justine Sowry praised what kind of person she is to come back from a back injury to do what she's done. "She's tough. She's gritty. She's Australian," Sowry, also from Australia, said, while smiling. "It just says a lot about who she is and she wants it."Your time as a college student-athlete is so small and she's valuing every minute on the pitch right now," Sowry said. With just three games left in the regular season, and the postseason still ahead, Russ is looking to have even more success while wearing a UofL uniform. "You'd rather finish your career strong and end on a high note than the other way around," Russ said. The Cards will take on William and Mary on Thursday and will end the regular season at home against Syracuse.