Knee pain is one of the most common injuries for athletes, it's also one of the trickiest to treat.

In some cases, it can keep athletes off the field for years, and sometimes for life.

Volleyball is Tatum Vedder's passion.

She served, set and spiked her way through high school and college, but this competitive volleyball player was benched at age 22 when something snapped.

"When the injury happened, the snap was almost louder than it felt," Vedder said.

Vedder suffered tears to her anterior cruciate ligament and meniscus. Her cartilage was separated from the bottom of her thigh-bone.

Three different surgeries and 20 months in physical therapy, and Vedder was still in pain.

"I just was struggling to get better," Vedder said.

Scripps Clinic Orthopedic Surgeon Tim Wang took a unique approach to treat Vedder. He reconstructed the ACL, but also performed two rare transplant surgeries.

First, he took living cartilage and bone from a donor.

He removed a small coin-shaped cylinder of damaged cartilage and underlying bone and replaced it with a section of healthy donor cartilage and bone.

"It's almost like patching a piece of drywall, in that we can drill out, or ream out a coin-shaped hole where the problem is and create a matching coin from a donor," Wang said.

The other surgery involved replacing Vedder's medial meniscus with healthy tissue from a donor.

"I feel strong and stable, 100 percent. I feel like it worked," Vedder said.

After physical therapy, Vedder celebrated back out at the beach, this time, riding the waves and getting back into the game.

Wang says the best candidates for the transplants are active men and women who are younger than 40 years old, and who have tried physical therapy or steroid injections, but are still in pain.