Just a few hours after stepping back out onto the court for the first time in over a year, Kailey McKnight sat down on the stone steps of the UNF Arena employee stairwell.
Still riding the adrenaline after helping the Ospreys take down Presbyterian, she spoke with a mixture of excitement and relief.
After an ACL tear threatened to take her away from the sport she loved for good, McKnight spent over a year working her way back to volleyball. Despite experiencing the fruits of the grueling recovery process, she smiled and gave a simple opening statement:
“It’s been a long wait.”
A late start
Kailey McKnight didn’t grow up in a volleyball family. In fact, she only began playing volleyball in 4th grade, after it became clear that she would grow too tall to continue participating in gymnastics.
“We never had volleyball in the family specifically,” McKnight said. “It was just something fun that I tried out and really enjoyed.”
When McKnight was younger, Kailey’s brother and mother played soccer. Before she was born, McKnight’s dad also wrestled in high school. With sports being a major part of her life growing up, she credits her family as being instrumental in her commitment to being a student-athlete.
“My parents are a really big support system, they kept me calm,” she said. “I could get totally overwhelmed, but they would just be like, ‘we’re good, we’re gonna handle this together’.”
The Wright-McKnight connection
While McKnight had always viewed UNF as a potential option to pursue her athletic and academic goals, it was her conversations with head coach Kristen Wright that sold her on the program.
“I loved her and the coaching staff,” McKnight said. “She wanted to keep talking to me, saying that my ceiling is high and ‘we want to help develop you’. And I was all for it.”
Coach Wright has been impressed with Kailey’s growth over the years, particularly in the mental aspect of her game. While she began her college career as “goofy and light,” as Wright described, she has since matured into a key leader for the Ospreys.
“She loves the game enough, she loves the program enough and she loves herself enough to handle hard [moments],” Wright said. “She’s grown in that area.”
McKnight credits coach Wright for a lot of her development as a volleyball player, highlighting her ability to teach the finer details of the sport.
“I was very athletic when I was younger, but I wasn’t really taught technique,” McKnight said. “So it’s just been jumping up and hitting the ball. See ball, hit ball, right? …she helped me evolve my [volleyball] IQ.”
Working her way back
McKnight knew instantly the moment it happened that it was her ACL that had torn. Later imaging revealed her meniscus to be torn as well. Over the coming months, the most challenging aspect of the recovery process was the mental side, as she struggled to stay positive while navigating the storm. While the recovery process took its toll, she emphasized that focusing on the small victories helped her to remain focused.
“The wait is so long, it feels like it’s never going to happen,” she said. “Until you have a good day at PT [physical therapy] and you’re like ‘oh, this is a step in the right direction’. Little things help make the bigger picture brighter.”
While the rehabilitation journey was long, McKnight also described it as ‘exciting’, because of the payoff when progress was made.
“Once you finally make these big jumps, it’s like ‘oh I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel’,” she said. “That process takes so long, it’s a lot of patience.”
A different perspective
McKnight’s favorite memories of her collegiate career will always be the ones she shares with her teammates, such as hyping each other up in the locker room before games or the bus rides when they travel to play on the road.
“It’s a time where we can decompress but still get our brains aligned and focused on the game,” she said. “That’s a part of our routine, to get locked in.”
As for how McKnight’s final season in her collegiate career will go, only time will tell. But coach Wright is adamant that her legacy at UNF is secure, regardless of the outcome of the final game of the season.
“I think she’s going to have a chip on her shoulder. I think she’s going to be able to fight harder than most because of what she’s been through and I think she’s going to have a lot more gratitude due to what she lost,” said Wright. “She’s gonna have a different perspective, not only in volleyball but in life. She’s a legend. She’s someone everyone will remember at North Florida.”
McKnight and the Ospreys begin ASUN conference play this weekend, traveling to West Georgia on Friday. First serve is set for 6 p.m. in Carrollton, Georgia.
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