My son injured his meniscus playing football. He had surgical correction for it last week. During the surgery, the doctor came out and told us that his ACL was "loose. It wasn’t seen on MRI. He fixed the meniscus but said rather than do an ACLreconstruction we should have him wear a brace on the knee for football and “see how it goes”. Will this be disqualifying?
For the Army, history of uncorrected anterior and posterior cruciate ligament injury does not meet the standard. History of surgical correction of knee ligaments does not meet the standard only if symptomatic or unstable.
The above is accession standards for the Army and I am almost willing to bet a couple pay checks the Navy is the same- especially for the Academy.
He has only a partial tear? What’s his exact diagnosis?
With an injury like this, it is hard to give a yes or no answer. Your best bet will be to go forward with the application process(I assume you are a soph/junior) in the next year or two, and see how things play out with the medical exam. The medical review board, DoDMERB, is reasonably understanding, and even though it may end up being a tedious process, they want to give out as many qualifications as possible, and will generally to their best to help you.
On another note, you may want to evaluate how much you son loves football vs how bad he wants to attend USNA, or serve in the military in general. Injuries like ACL/Meniscus tears can very easily reoccur in a contact sport like football. I know it can be hard to do, and you should really have your son think about this, but maybe he should switch to another fall sport.
I was in a similar situation last year with baseball. I was pitches away from tearing my UCL completely and requiring surgery that would take a full year to recover, so I gave up the sport in order to be able to apply to USNA this year without any medical complications.