Apr. 20—ROCHESTER — That was a brilliant start for Taylor Kurtz.
Then an eighth grader and running for Dover-Eyota, she took the 2023 Class 1A state track meet by stunning storm, winning the 200 meters and finishing second in the 100.
"I remember I was like, 'wow, I did not expect to do that,'" Kurtz said. "Honestly, I was just so new to everything then."
It seemed to set the table for a massive future. It's not often that eighth-graders win the short sprints at state. Sprinters' bodies normally take time and age to develop.
Kurtz, who transferred to Rochester Mayo following that eighth grade year, is an all-around athletic star — soccer in the summer and fall, hockey in the winter and track and field in the spring.
But life threw the junior a wicked changeup in the fall of her sophomore year.
Kurtz was on the soccer pitch when it happened, going to retrieve a ball on defense. It was Mayo's third game of the season. But when she tried to juke one direction, her right knee didn't compensate and collapsed.
Kurtz had torn everything in the knee. There was an ACL tear, a partial meniscus tear and a tear of her MCL.
Just like that, three games in, Kurtz's season was done. And done not just for that season, but for all of the hockey and track and field seasons that were to folowing that school year.
He world had been blown up. This girl with all of the promise for greatness had just had it all taken away.
"It was devastating," Kurtz said. "I mean, activity is a part of my everyday life. And so to go from every day of go, go, go to nothing at all ... l mean you can't even walk. All of a sudden you're relying on everybody else. That's too much."
It took a while, but Kurtz finally wrapped her head around what she was up against. There was no way she was going to bid athletics a permanent goodbye. She enjoyed them way too much and was too gifted to abandon them.
She was left with one course of action. She had to get to work, rehabbing that knee until she was back to her prior healthy and dynamic self.
"A lot of the time I was just trying to get back in the gym and rehabbing, because I knew that getting my range of motion back was the most important thing," Kurtz said. "And that's right at the beginning stages. You've got to get that going."
She didn't just work out. She considered the mental part of sports and made a concerted effort to get better there. This especially tied to track and field for her.
"I looked back at my old stuff and tried to focus on the mental more because I realized that a lot of the race actually comes from your mental ability and not just your physical abilities," said Kurtz, who admits that track and field is her No.1 love. "I was very in my own head about my races. I'd come down on myself a lot and I was a harsh critic of myself where if something didn't go my way, I took it very personally."
The third thing she did was get closer to God. Never has she felt so close to Him as during this difficult stretch. She kept harkening back to a saying her grandfather often repeated and took it to heart.
"My grandpa always says, 'Do your best and let God do the rest,'" Kurtz said. "It's a good thing to live by."
The years went by and gradually Kurtz had done it. She'd mended.
By this past summer she was on the soccer pitch again — scared slightly because she had suffered her injury during soccer season — but delighted to be playing again.