Focus set on recovery: Prairie volleyball player shares story of recovery from ugly knee injury

Amelia Renner has worked to be noticed on the volleyball court ever since she was in middle school.

Last fall, she got more attention than she ever expected, but not for the reasons she had hoped.

“We had a match at Evergreen, and when I entered the gym, I had part of the football boys from Evergreen saying to me ‘Are you that girl in the video?’ ” Renner said. “And I’m like ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ ”

The video. Those who have seen it won’t soon forget it.

It shows the play last September — a play like hundreds Renner had made as a member of the Prairie High School volleyball team — that ended her high school volleyball career, threw a monkey wrench into her senior year and altered the course of her future.

Renner joined a long list of local athletes who have suffered major knee injuries. But Renner’s injury was unique, and the video reveals that.

“I think she was scheduled to get an MRI when I watched the game film,” Prairie volleyball coach Jen Palmer said. “But I didn’t need to wait for the results after watching that. Anyone who watched that would know it was bad.”

Renner’s recovery involved more than physical trauma. Her journey was fraught with repeated frustration before finally reaching a place of hope.

She jumped at the chance to move to outside hitter as a senior. To prepare for the position change, Renner spent last summer working with a trainer to add four to six inches to her vertical leap.

“She put in so much work last summer and had such a great attitude,” Palmer said. “I felt like she was going to be a huge asset for us.”

Renner’s senior year started well in Prairie’s opening match on Sept. 12 against Camas.

“That was the best I had ever seen her play,” Palmer said.

“I came down on one foot, but I came down on the inside of my left foot,” Amelia said. “When I did that, my knee went inwards 90 degrees toward my (right) knee. Then I collapsed on top of myself.”

Her knee buckled laterally the way it’s meant to bend forward. But at the time, no one knew that, not even Amelia.

“I just remember going up, hitting the ball, coming down and going to the ground,” she said.

Tommy Renner dropped his clipboard and raced to Amelia on the court.

Amelia said: “But we didn’t need gas. My dad said ‘you want something to drink?’ and I said sure. Then he left to get a drink. When he came back, he said ‘I’m so sorry. That’s really bad.’ ”

Amelia insisted on watching the video, but Tommy was reluctant to show her. Eventually, he relented, allowing her to watch it as she sat alone in their truck.

“When I came back, she was crying,” he said. “Then we were both crying.”

The video began making its rounds on social media. After a while, Amelia said it felt like everyone had seen it.

“I was told that only about 10 percent of patients have their meniscus regenerate,” Amelia said. “So we had to keep it as immobilized as possible to give it a chance to heal.”

Going to her bedroom on the second floor of the family’s Brush Prairie home was off limits, so Amelia began sleeping on one end of a sectional sofa in the family room, with Mom or Dad on the other end.

“She couldn’t do anything because her leg was immobilized straight,” Tommy Renner said. “Even sitting down was hard.”

Amelia missed three weeks of school after the first surgery. A second surgery, to repair her ACL, was scheduled in November.

“Now I’m just a student; I’m no longer a student-athlete,” she said. “I’m no longer the athlete that I was, and I’m never going to be the athlete that I was again. For me, the biggest part is realizing that.”

A new course

As one of the sports she played when she was younger, Amelia opted to play golf at Prairie last spring, earning second-team all-league honors.

Prairie golf coach Paul Shapard “told her if she put a quarter of the amount of time she put into volleyball into golf, she could maybe play at college,” Tommy Renner said.

So last summer, as she worked to strengthen her volleyball skills, Amelia also took golf lessons.

But missing school is what hurt most for Amelia.

“I had already missed a third of the beginning of my senior year, and now I’m not going to have the rest of it,” Amelia said. “It’s awful.”

She worked so hard last summer to make her senior year of volleyball special, and in the first match, it was taken away.

Now working hard to get healthy enough to play golf, that was lost before it could even start.

But her athletic journey might not be over yet.

Last week, as she was resigned to just being a college student and attend Dixie State in Utah, Amelia was contacted by the volleyball coach at Ottawa University, a small NAIA school in Kansas, with a scholarship offer to play volleyball and golf.

“I called my doctor and asked her about it,” Amelia said. “She said ‘golf, I’m confident you could play anytime now that you have your brace. Volleyball, you’d have to redshirt a year and see. I can’t guarantee that you could come back and play at that level. But I’m not saying you can’t do it either.”

Amelia’s parents are apprehensive about the idea of her returning to volleyball.