The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Knee injury couldn’t stop Kirtland’s McCollister
“Sometimes the best thing to do is confront face-to-face what scares you to prove to yourself, ‘I got this.’ ”
The Kirtland girls basketball team had just tipped off its 201718 season when senior Katie McCollister dribbled down the floor, made a cut and pulled up just inside the 3-point line.
The last time the Hornets’ senior point guard had done that move, it ended in catastrophe, in Game 12 of her junior season in the waning seconds of Kirtland’s game against Chagrin Valley Conference rival Perry.
With Kirtland down by two with five seconds remaining in the game, McCollister went for the game-tying shot, came down and ended up with a serious knee injury. This time was different. McCollister landed fine — there was no pain, no injury.
Everything was going to be all right.
“Honestly, this feels amazing,” McCollister said. “When I went out last year and wasn’t able to help my team, it was devastating. Knowing this year I could come back and do what I planned to do last year is an amazing feeling.”
Like any athlete, the worst fears come to mind when a serious knee injury comes into the picture. When she landed in that game last year against Perry that ended the junior year for the three-sport athlete — “I missed the shot,” she recalled from that game — she not only tore the ACL in her left knee, but she also sprained the MCL and tore cartilage.
“I definitely felt it. The bones shifted when I came down,” she said. “The next day it was all swollen, so the trainer said I should get it checked out.”
The prognosis meant the rest of her junior year of basketball was over.
So was her spring regimen as part of the Kirtland softball team.
Would her senior year be in jeopardy, too?
Surgery was in the offing, but would she ever be the athlete she was prior to the crushing knee injury?
“Oh yeah, that was huge on my mind,” she said.
So she went to work with rehab to ensure she would do everything in her power to be the player she once was. It helped, she said, that her father Scott McCollister had once torn his ACL and had successfully rebounded from that.
His encouragement was paramount, she said.
“Dad always told me I can’t dwell on my knee,” she said. “It’ll make me play scared, and I can’t do that. I kept telling myself my knee was stronger than it ever was.”
Six months after surgery, she took part in a summer basketball open gym. She signed up for her senior year of soccer with the promise to her parents, her physical therapist and her coaches that she would let them know if her knee was ailing her in any way.
Take it slow, take it smart — that was the plan.
It was easier said than done.
“I couldn’t do it. I told them I would (tell them if it hurt), but I couldn’t,” she said. “I was confident enough in my knee. The doctors did a great job. It was tough, but I just kept pushing through the pain.”
She ended up regaining her starting position as a midfielder for Kirtland’s soccer team, which advanced to the state championship
game. She earned honorable mention all-CVC honors.
Just running onto the field at Mapfre Stadium in Columbus, she said, confirmed she had done the right thing by pushing the envelope with her rehab.
Now that basketball season is here, and she is flourishing for the 11-0 Hornets, she feels back to 100 percent. She is averaging three assists and three steals per game as the starting point guard, joining Sydney Snyder, Lauren Snyder, Jenna Sayle and Lauren Lutz in the starting lineup.
McCollister said she takes great pride in what is asked of her as the starting point guard — leading the defense, facilitating the offense and playing defense, which she considers her strong suit.
“Honestly, I want us to make it as far as we can in the playoffs,” she said of the goals for the team. “Of course we want to win the CVC, but the main focus is going as far as we can in the tournament.”
McCollister thinks back to one of the rare moments in her rehab last winter where she broke down. It was during the Hornets’ tournament run that ended in the district final against eventual state champion Gilmour.
She remembers the day in the locker room alone after her teammates had departed, and Coach Bob Bell walked in.
“Throughout the whole process, I don’t think I cried — even when I tore it,” she said. “For some reason that day, it just hit me. We were in the playoffs and I couldn’t do anything to help. I cried. I just cried.
“Coach Bell said, ‘I know this is hard, but you can take this and come back even stronger.’ I think of that every day. It has stuck with me,” she said.
“I wish the knee injury didn’t happen. I wish I didn’t have pain. But honestly, I can’t think of things going any better right now.”