WEST ROXBURY – What started out as a storybook trip to Florida turned out to be a nightmare for Catholic Memorial running back Mekhi Dodd.

On the second play of the game against a talented Cardinal Newman squad out of West Palm Beach, Dodd went down and immediately knew he had suffered a severe injury. Days later, he heard the dreaded three letters no athlete ever wants to hear – ACL.

“I heard a pop so I had a feeling it was something serious,” Dodd said. “When the doctor told me I tore my ACL and I needed surgery, that was pretty tough to take. It was the worst day of my life.”

Not having the home threat of Dodd in the backfield, Catholic Memorial wasn’t quite the same team. Sure, the Knights put together a solid 8-3 season, but they failed to win a state title, having seen their possibility of a three-peat go by the wayside against Marshfield in the Div. 2 state semifinals.

“Mekhi is a difference-maker, you saw that in the first game last year against Mansfield (169 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns),” said longtime coach John DiBiaso. “He’s just a very good back and when we lost him, we had to grind it out a little more after that.”

Not being able to help his teammates was almost as frustrating as the arduous rehabilitation process. Dodd admitted it was painful standing on the sidelines watching the Knights fall to St. John’s Prep and Marshfield.

“You just want to get out there so bad and can’t – that was very tough for me,” Dodd said. “When you can’t play, it made me work hard and I just kept pushing because I couldn’t wait to get back.”

DiBiaso has been a head coach for more than four decades and has been blessed with a plethora of talented running backs. He isn’t shy about including Dodd in that category and compares him favorably with Isaac Johnson, who starred under DiBiaso at Everett from 2008-2012.

“I said he’s very much like Isaac in a lot of ways,” DiBiaso said. “Mekhi never looks like he’s going fast, but he just doesn’t get caught. (Former Everett great) Diamond Ferri looked fast and ran like that whereas Mekhi is like Isaac in that they just glide.”

Like Johnson, Dodd is following a similar collegiate path. A few months back, the 6-foot, 205-pound senior gave a verbal commitment to play at Boston College.

“BC is close to home and that was always important to me,” said Dodd, who lives in Mattapan. “They were very supportive of me (during the rehab process) and I just felt comfortable there.”

After months of working to get back on the field, Dodd was recently cleared to start football-related activities. It didn’t take long for word to filter that the senior running back was primed for a successful return. In a recent scrimmage against Fitchburg, Dodd ripped off a textbook long touchdown run, wowing many in attendance.

“The coaches here really pushed me hard, working with me to get me back where I was,” Dodd said. “I would say in the last month I really started feeling comfortable with my cuts. Things started coming easier for me.”

That’s about as much as one should expect to hear Dodd talking about himself. DiBiaso, along with athletic director Thomas Claiborne (a former football star lineman from Wellesley who went on to play at Boston College, spent as much time talking about Dodd the person as they did about him as a running back.

“He’s a wonderful kid, very, very humble,” DiBiaso said. “He really doesn’t like talking about him. You won’t ever hear him saying ‘I’m this and I’m that’.

“He’s just a great kid.”