It was loud. Uncomfortably loud the second the left knee of a then 17-year old Kylie Ferguson connected with the artificial hardwood floor of Waterloo's RIM Park. 

Never in her volleyball career had securing a point from the left side of the court resulted in a blackout so extreme, that it be followed up with a cross-court dash from her parents watching in the stands. 

Ferguson had no real grasp of what was actually causing the pain that engulfed the entire left side of her lower body in a messy collection of pins and needles as she idled below her mom and dad on the emerald-shaded court. 

Quickly she scanned her senses. Was it a broken bone? A tear? She questioned. Or maybe she got lucky and was just experiencing a mild muscle cramp that could be shaken off and later laughed about after she got up and continued to play. 

These thoughts raced through Ferguson's head almost immediately, only to be dethroned in value by how this experience would shape her ability to find a university team to play for with her senior year of high school just five months away. 

Ferguson didn't know what an ACL injury even felt like or how to locate where the pivotal muscle in a volleyball player's arsenal even sat on her own body, but she was diagnosed with an ACL tear in the aftermath of her 18U Provincial Championship. 

A successful partial repair surgery in August sidelined her for an entire year as very quickly, did her fear of losing offers at the university level become a harsh reality due in part to the questions surrounding her injured knee. 

"I remember thinking, 'Oh my gosh, how am I going to get recruited now?'" said Ferguson. "Coaches don't want to see someone with an injury like this."

Staring down an empty inbox the following January, Ferguson began firing off emails to collegiate coaches in hopes of latching onto a team willing to roll the dice on her injury.

She didn't know if she could still set the way she used to, block the way she wanted or smash the volleyball in the same manner that earned her MVP awards the year prior at the club level. 

What she did know at the time was the email address of Dustin Reid, the head coach of TMU's women's volleyball program and one of just two OUA coaches to have hoisted a national championship in the 21st century. The two connected via email the same day and evolved their conversation to a pivotal phone call shortly after. 

"I basically expressed to him, 'Hey this is my situation, I'm really passionate and I want to play next year,'" recalled Ferguson. She applied to multiple programs at TMU and offered to redshirt in her first year with the club for the chance to one day play the sport at the university level. 

To her immediate surprise, Reid was on board with the idea and invited her to train with the Bold, then the Ryerson Rams, in the fall. Soon after, Ferguson elected to major in criminology and move into the city on her own accord, finally standing on two healthy legs and excited to make a lasting impression on the coach that extended his generosity towards her.  

Her eagerness to get back to the court masked the bitter reality of the global pandemic that propped her 2020 OUA volleyball season on the ropes of being knocked out as sport leagues around the country were being abandoned at a rapid rate.

Her OUA debut got pushed to 2021 as the province slammed the door shut on all collegiate sports shortly after she moved downtown. Ferguson eventually appeared in two matches for the Bold the following fall, coming off the bench twice during the team's opening weekend in Kingston. 

With only a couple days separating the rookie from her first career home opener against the York Lions, Ferguson and the rest of the Bold played against one another in a scrimmage. Opting to chase down a redirected ball, Ferguson innocently pivoted her left leg and immediately fell to the ground in pain. 

Unlike the last time she stalled on a court as a 17-year old, Ferguson knew what the pins and needles that squalled around the inside of her left knee meant. 

This time, the thought of it being a broken bone or cramp never even surfaced through her mind. She knew it was serious, she knew it was season-ending and delivered to her in the form of a reality check that she was not ready to face just yet. 

"I'd worked so hard to rehab and to get back to a place where I thought I was pretty healthy…taking all the steps that I was given to put myself in a good position for that year and I didn't have any control over what happened."

"Finally being healthy for I felt like the first time in a couple years at that point and then experiencing this, It was just like defeat."

An MRI revealed Ferguson had re-tore her ACL and required a full repair that involved harvesting a piece of her hamstring to provide internal support to her knee. For a second straight year, her rookie season was stripped from her before ever kicking into first gear. 

She returned to the court the following season sporting a bionic-like black brace around both the inside and outside of her left knee. After a year of wearing it and managing to stay healthy enough to appear in 13 matches for the Bold in 2023, the accessory became a talking point for a visiting fan during a winter road match with McMaster. 

A mother reached out to Ferguson via Instagram following TMU's road defeat to the Marauders back in January. The third-year appeared in all four sets with the Bold, picking up a kill while wearing a knee brace that at that point in her career held the same importance as her shoe laces did on any given night. 

The fan mentioned her daughter was fresh off an ACL injury herself and noticed the brace around Ferguson's knee almost instantly. She asked if Ferguson could write her daughter a letter about the recovery process behind the injury she'd had already suffered twice in her career.

Without hesitation and feeling moved by the request, Ferguson typed away paragraph after paragraph expressing her road to recovery and motivational tidbits along the way. 

"Being able to influence younger female athletes is something I've taken away from this experience," she said. 

"Not everyone gets a chance to do that and it took an injury for me to do it, but at the end of the day, I feel so lucky to be able to connect with someone like that. It really changed my perspective on the whole injury," said Ferguson, who in trying to help the young fan, was able to find solace in her own mental struggles surrounding the brace's depiction of weakness and reliance. 

Now in her senior year with the Bold and listed as one of the few members of the team to have started their TMU career during the middle of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Ferguson looks back at the challenges and tribulations that planted potholes in her collegiate journey as an athlete with a sense of pride and significance.

From undergoing a pair of ACL surgeries to living on her own during the biggest health crisis the city's ever seen, Ferguson's strength both mentally and physically has been stressed and strained over the years, always discovering new ways to bend but never breaking open her fighting spirit. 

"I don't know if I would have considered myself strong mentally before this, but I think now that I've been able to push through such adversity, I honestly feel like I can tackle anything and can handle anything that gets thrown at me," said Ferguson. 

"Things happen for a reason. I'm more than my injury and I'm more than what kind of adversity has been thrown at me," she added. 

So when she and the Bold welcomed the Ottawa Gee-Gees to town in November for their first home contest of 2024, not even a flinch of hesitation stemmed from Ferguson during a tightly-contested five-set battle before a packed crowd at the Mattamy Athletic Centre (MAC).

Leading the visitors 12-6 in a tension-filled fifth set, Ferguson and her front-row teammate Julia Breen leaped in unison as the Gee-Gees worked to fire off a kill to cut into their deficit. Their arms elevated to the rafters as the ball ricocheted off Breen's hand and viscously spit itself back onto Ottawa's side of the court to bring the Bold another point closer to closing out the win. 

Ferguson landed back on her feet, her left knee fully locked, and high-fived the rest of the Bold on the court while her celebratory remarks drowned themselves out as mobs of excited fans clouded both ends of her peripherals.

It was the university home game she always dreamed of playing in, far from the one she missed out on by mere days in 2021, or the one that never arrived in 2020. This time there were no masks, no restrictions and no trying to locate the pain in her left leg. Just Ferguson and her signature knee brace soaking up a moment that was four years in the making.