After leaving the Colorado team, Katie Hnida went on to play for the University of New Mexico where she kicked two PATs in 2003. AP

Last week SI writer Richard Deitsch interviewed Katie Hnida for the magazine's Q&A. The 25-year-old is the author of Still Kicking: My Journey As the First Woman to Play Division I College Football. Here are additional excerpts from their conversation:

SI: Three years ago you told SI's Rick Reilly that in the summer of 1999, after your freshman year at Colorado, you were raped by a teammate (SI, Feb. 23, 2004). How was it to write about that?

Hnida: Part of the writing was therapeutic, but a better way to describe [reliving] things like the rape and the harassment at CU is surgery. It was something that was incredibly painful but in the end was healing and put me in a more healthy place.

SI: Is there a day that goes by where you don't think about what happened at Colorado?

Hnida: No, of course not.

SI: At what point did you know you would write about your experiences?

Hnida: After I had spoken so much. When I came forward initially, I had a ton of offers for book and movie deals. But it was in the middle of football and school and I blew those off. When I graduated I knew I was not interested in doing a movie. But I had been doing a lot of speaking at the time at universities and for women's groups and people were responding very positively to my story. It seemed like I was able to help people so I thought it would be great to put it into book form. And it kind of gave me a chance to talk about football because all anyone ever focuses on is what happened at CU and coach [Gary] Barnett and what he said. New Mexico got lost in the shuffle.

SI: How often did you write?

Hnida: I wrote every day. I started out with a co-editor but she withdrew because of some health problems so I ended up just having someone advising me. I wrote the book myself at my parents home in Littleton, Colo. I wrote there for about three months.

SI: Did you show anyone in your family the chapters prior to finishing?

Hnida: I basically waited until I had most of it written. The rape chapter, in particular, I showed my parents, my best friend and my brothers and sisters. I had them take a look. I think they knew pretty close to everything but seeing it written down and the written word hit everyone a little bit harder.

SI: Did you breakdown during the writing process?

Hnida: Ironically, the rape chapter was one of the first chapters that I wrote. It ended up kind of happening at a really random time and suddenly I knew I just had to write it. I wrote it with pen and paper, sitting on the floor. The rest of the book I did on computer. I just sat down and just started writing and writing. I just got it all out. I think I sat on the floor and wrote on the floor for three hours. I don't remember crying at that time.