Many athletes suffer from an injury at some point during their career. However, for Kaylie, it was surprising when her injury was not improving from rehab.

“I remember the doctor calling us and saying, ‘I don’t know how you were walking and doing all of these things with how severe the injury is’,” said Kaylie.

Kaylie initially injured her knee playing volleyball in a club tournament.

“It was just one of those situations where I went up for a hit and I ended up coming down, landing on somebody else’s foot. I kind of got up brushed it off and didn’t really think much of it,” explains Kaylie.

Kaylie finished out her volleyball season and continued performing rehab on her knee as her track season started. After her first track practice, Kaylie knew that something was not right with her knee because her knee was still giving out and she could not properly land on it.

“I had been doing rehab with my athletic trainer and it wasn’t getting better. My knee was still giving out and I couldn’t land on it. I remember there was one indoor practice that we had for track and I did my first full-on throw of the season and I landed on my bad knee and it just gave out,” Kaylie describes. “I sat on the floor, and I was like ‘I don’t know what’s going on; I just know that something’s wrong’.”

Looking towards the future, Kaylie knew that track was the sport she wanted to focus on, as she felt it gave her the most opportunities to play in college. So, Kaylie decided she needed to get her knee checked out so that she could take track seriously.

After consulting her high school athletic trainer about what to do, they recommended she see an orthopedic physician at OSMS.

Kaylie clarified that the athletic director referred her to OSMS because “they have a really good reputation especially for my kind of injury”.

“I ended up hyperextending my knee so much to the point where I completely severed my ACL, and my meniscus was also completely torn. The procedure I ended up having done was a complete ACL reconstruction with the patellar tendon and then also a complete meniscus repair,” Kaylie describes.

In track and field, Kaylie is a thrower in shotput, javelin, and discus. There is a lot of spinning and power that is involved in the lower body, which made her nervous about coming back to.

Kaylie explained, “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be back to 100% strength again with my injury, but I can say that I’m back even more than I thought I would be. The whole process was worth it, and I shattered every single high school personal best that I had just in this year alone. It’s really motivating to know that I went through a really hard time and a hard injury that I had to come back from, but ended up coming back stronger than ever which I never would have expected.”

Thanks to OSMS, Kaylie is back to throwing shotput, javelin, and discus at the collegiate level at Viterbo University.