Volleyball player comes back stronger from knee surgery – Sanford Health News

The Sanford Health Athletic Readiness Program (SHARP) is designed for athletes like Audrey Rydell, who made a complete recovery from surgery but still wasn’t quite back to where she wanted to be on the volleyball court.
Rydell is a high school athlete from Fargo, North Dakota, who dislocated her kneecap twice in the span of three months. She opted for surgery the second time and then focused on coming back healthy.
SHARP defines getting back to 100% from a competitor’s perspective. Athletes work with a certified athletic trainer to form an assessment and recovery plan specific to the injury, sport and individual goals.
“Everybody wants to come back fast,” Rydell said. “But you also want to come back healthy so that it doesn’t happen again, especially if you want to play in college.”
Regaining the confidence necessary to compete without lingering concern for past injuries was Rydell’s ultimate goal and can be a vital piece of any athlete’s recovery plan.
Getting to that stage for Rydell, who will be playing volleyball at St. Cloud State University after she graduates from high school, involved lead strength and conditioning coach Al Kraft from Sanford Sports Performance in Fargo.
His work with Rydell, a senior next fall at Fargo North High School, helped her bridge the gap from a structurally sound knee to a knee she didn’t have to worry about during a volleyball match.
Kraft explained the SHARP process this way:
“When an athlete gets cleared by a doctor, they’re not playing a game the next day,” he said. “It’s more like a dimmer switch. We turn the dimmer up a little, see how they’re doing, listen to their body and if everything looks good, then we can turn it up a little higher.”
The light is now bright for Rydell, who is in the midst an active summer of volleyball in preparation for her high school season in the fall.
“Feeling good physically about my knee again was huge, but just as important was the mental side of it,” Rydell said. “You’re worried and stressed because you don’t really know what to expect. Al knew my limits, but he also knew when to push me. Because of that, I was able to build on my confidence every single week.”
In July of 2024, Rydell dislocated her kneecap attempting a jump serve at a summer camp. It was the first injury she ever had that kept her out of action for any length of time.
Because her high school season was coming soon, she opted for rehab without knee surgery. Treatment for a subluxated patella – the medical term for her injury – often begins with non-surgical treatment.
She reinjured the knee at a September practice, however. This time, she and her family decided surgery was in her best interest.
In November, she had the procedure done by Benjamin Noonan, M.D., of Sanford Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Fargo. She quickly resumed physical therapy with the goal being to become the same level of athlete she was before the injury.
As part of Kraft’s work with SHARP, he frequently works with athletes recovering from knee surgeries. The most common injury he encounters is damage to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
Athletes interested in SHARP begin with a free half-hour consultation, as it did with Rydell, that addresses the specific physical demands of sport they play, their goals and their timeline for recovery.
“We start by talking about when they want to be back in their sport,” Kraft said. “When we establish that, it becomes, ‘Here is what we would recommend. This is where I’d like to see you progress before you return to your sport.’”
He preaches patience, which can be a tough sell to an athlete eager to get things back to the way they used to be.
“Sometimes athletes want to come back way too early,” he said. “It will be, ‘Well, I want to be back to playing basketball in a month.’ I’ll tell them I wouldn’t recommend that and that’s not what they want to hear.”
More sensible was the route Rydell took with Kraft’s guidance. They started by establishing a baseline via physical tests, then monitored and built up to benchmarks that would allow a physically sound and safe return to the court.
Physical risks are always going to be there, but there are ways to significantly minimize them.
“Al is super encouraging,” Rydell said. “Right away we started with a plan. I wanted to spend two weeks on getting stronger and adding to that at volleyball practice.”
Typically, a session for Rydell would include stretching, lifting and increasingly demanding exercises. While patience is part of the recovery foundation, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.
“We are really safe in our progressions and we don’t ask them to do too much right away,” Kraft said. “Over time we start to push a little harder and we’ll ask them to do more. Part of the benefit of strength training is being able to show athletes how strong they really are. They see what they can do and they start believing in themselves again.”
For many volleyball players, it’s often not so much the jumping that causes injuries as it is what happens when they come down. To that end, Rydell jumped off increasingly large boxes with the focus on landing in a way that reduces physical risks.
Often Kraft will watch his athletes and know right away what they need to work on. He will back that up with the location’s state-of-the-art 3D motion assessment technology that allows him to visually demonstrate to athletes how they can move better.
In Rydell’s case, Kraft could complete a Sanford Sports Performance session with her at the Fargo Parks Sports Center at the Sanford Sports Complex and then, at the same facility, watch her practice with her Sanford Fargo 17 Red teammates.
“It was great that Al was able to watch me practice – he was able to watch my mechanics and I think that helped quite a bit,” Rydell said. “He’s just such a great person. He really worked with me to be my best, but he is also someone that you can ask questions and know he is going to tell you the right way to do things.”
Rydell’s return after injury involved a Sanford surgeon, a Sanford strength and conditioning coach, as well as a Sanford volleyball team overseen by Pete Tomhave, lead Sanford Sports Academy specialist – volleyball, and Sanford Fargo Red 17 coach Sydney Lanoue.
Kraft knows all of them and was able to consult with them throughout Rydell’s rehab.
“We keep the lines of communication open,” Kraft said. “Our Sanford coaches Pete and Sydney, too, are part of the athletic care team. We get a lot of stakeholders involved in a process that is very transparent. We have great communication in setting up expectations.”
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Posted In Fargo, Orthopedics, Rehabilitation & Therapy, Sanford Sports, Sports Medicine
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