It’s one of the most dreadful things an athlete can experience: a traumatic knee injury leading to hospital stays, months of rehabilitation and uncertainty of what will happen in the future.

Former McFarland High School athlete Katelynn Gunderson went through that experience April 13, 2018. She was competing in a match for the USA women’s national wrestling team in River Falls when her knee suddenly gave out, and her hopes for a successful women’s college wrestling career came to a temporary halt.

“The way my knee bent, it just couldn’t hold the position,” said Gunderson, a 2018 McFarland graduate who had signed a letter of intent to wrestle on the first women’s team at Lakeland University in Plymouth. “It just gave out. I was in so much pain. It sounded like a cork coming out of a champagne bottle.”

Gunderson underwent surgery for her torn ACL a few weeks later. After that came the long process of rehabilitating her knee, so she could return to the wrestling mat. The process was both frustrating and frightening.