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Injury · 2025—2026

Sophie Cunningham's Road Back From the 2025 MCL Injury

An MCL injury ended Cunningham's first Indiana season in August 2025. Just under nine months later she was on the floor for the Fever's 2026 opener.

Published

Indiana at Connecticut

Sophie Cunningham left the floor at Connecticut in the second quarter on 17 August 2025 with a knee injury and did not come back on. Indiana had eleven regular-season games still to play. She played none of them.

Her first season with the Fever had been going well by the shape of her career. She was in her seventh WNBA year and her first away from Phoenix, having arrived in the February 2025 trade. She played 30 games, averaged 8.6 points, and shot .432 from three — the best three-point season of her career. On 1 July, Indiana beat the Minnesota Lynx 74—59 in Minneapolis to take the Commissioner's Cup, the first professional trophy she had won.

Six weeks after that trophy, the season was over for her. What the game report established that night was narrow: a knee injury in the second quarter, and no return to the game.

Ruled out for the season

Two days later the position changed from an injury to a conclusion. The Fever's roster update on 19 August ruled her out for the remainder of the 2025 season. Reporting that day described the injury as a season-ending MCL tear in her right knee, suffered in the Connecticut game. The club's own release did not name the diagnosis.

Those forty-eight hours are the difference between what happened on the court and what was known about it afterwards. Indiana played out the rest of the year, postseason included, without her.

Off the court, then back on it

  1. 17 August 2025

    Injury

    Knee injury in the second quarter at Connecticut; she did not return to the game.

  2. 19 August 2025

    Season ends

    Ruled out for the remainder of 2025. Reporting that day described a right-knee MCL tear.

  3. Off WNBA court

    No WNBA game between 17 August 2025 and 9 May 2026 — the length of the WNBA offseason plus the rest of Indiana's 2025 campaign.

  4. 9 May 2026

    Return

    Indiana's 2026 season opener, her first WNBA appearance since the injury.

The months in between

The next dated point in her WNBA record is nearly nine months later. Between the two sits an offseason, which is where the recovery took place, and it left almost no public record: no game, no line in a box score.

The one dated marker before the season is 19 April 2026, when the Fever confirmed she was healthy for the start of it. She had also re-signed that month, on a one-year deal for 2026, reported at $665,000, which she said on her podcast she had found frustrating for its length rather than its value.

Indiana 104—107 Dallas Wings

She played Indiana's opener on 9 May 2026: 3 points and 4 rebounds in a 107—104 defeat to the Dallas Wings. As a performance it was a quiet evening. As a date it is the one that matters, because it is the day she was back in a WNBA game.

Nothing about that night settled how the knee would hold up over a season, and the opener was not treated as a finished recovery. It marked the return to competition and nothing more than that.

Five weeks later

24
Points, off the bench
6
Three-pointers, matching her career high
113—91
Indiana beat the Toronto Tempo

A Commissioner's Cup group game, and the clearest single performance of her season to that point. Indiana's 113 points were a franchise record in regulation — a team mark, not an individual one.

Where it stands

One further absence followed in June: she was ruled out of the game against Chicago on 11 June with a right-elbow issue and was back in the line-up against Connecticut on 13 June. One game.

The 2026 regular season is still being played, so there are no season totals here and no verdict on the year. The chronology that began at Connecticut in August 2025 ends, for now, in the plainest way available: she is playing for Indiana again.

Sources

The 2025 injury date and the 19 August season-ending status come from separate reports and are dated separately above. No account of the intervening period beyond the 19 April 2026 fitness confirmation is published here. The 2026 figures quoted are single-game figures, not season totals.

Checked 8 September 2026.