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“There She Is”: How Texas Tech’s Best Medical Minds Helped Kylie Bahr Find Her Way Back

On3 imageby: S.Hilliard10/15/25shelcehill
Copy of New Signing-21

The smile came halfway through our conversation.

Texas Tech Soccer star defender Kylie Bahr was talking about the long road back — the pain, the confusion, the year she lost on the sideline — when she suddenly stopped, smiled and laughed.

“I’m just getting giddy thinking about it,” she said, shaking her head with a grin as the thought of the team’s upcoming game crossed her mind. “I get to play again in two days.”

Even 13 games into the season she still gets geeked at the simple thought of playing. It was a small moment, but one that tells her story better than words ever could.

Yet still my words will try, because a year ago that smile didn’t come so easily for Bahr.

That’s why playing this year hasn’t been something she’s taken for granted — not after an injury so puzzling it took some of Texas Tech’s best medical minds to figure out how to fix it.

The Injury That Wouldn’t Add Up

Bahr was poised to help carry on the success of the historic run she and her teammates made in 2023. A year that saw Texas Tech go undefeated in the regular season, claim its first Big 12 regular season championship and advance to the Sweet 16. As one of the returning veterans, she was expected to anchor a talented group of returners and newcomers.

Then, during a training session back home in Colorado last June, everything changed.

“I was back home in Colorado and I was training with my old club coach and actually Raleigh [Greason, who’s from Colorado too] was the one who played a pass to me,” Bahr recalled. “It was non-contact. I just stepped in to finish a cross and I felt something tweak. I just knew that it wasn’t something minor.”

She flew back to Lubbock a few days later and underwent surgery on her knee. It was a simple procedure, in sports terms at least. The kind that usually sidelines a player for a few weeks, not a full year.

But even for one of the most fearless athletes to ever step foot on Tech’s campus, there was nothing simple about what came next. The pain never really went away. What should have been a routine recovery became a confusing, stop-and-start ordeal.

“The pain just never left,” Bahr explained. “It was such a weird feeling. My knee was swollen and hurting, but nothing was structurally wrong. That was the frustrating part, not having answers.”

Eventually doctors discovered she had a unique abnormality in the shape of her meniscus. Nothing that hinders her ability longterm or compromises her knee structurally. A small piece of the puzzle was solved but it still didn’t solve the greater mystery as the knee wasn’t reacting the way one typically would to rehab, because it was in fact atypical.

Her head coach Tom Stone remembers that same sense of befuddlement. “No one was really worried because she didn’t have a serious injury, but for whatever reason, we couldn’t get past a certain point. That’s what made it so confusing and frustrating for Kylie especially.”

So as the season got underway without her….the search for answers continued.

Texas Tech Meeting of Minds That Changed Everything

When the pain wouldn’t fade and no scan could explain it, Bahr’s recovery turned into a university-wide effort to get her back on track.

Texas Tech’s athletic trainers, sports performance staff, doctors and specialists from multiple sports departments began collaborating to figure out what was going on. They reexamined everything. Her movement patterns, her strength work, even the way she cut and planted on her repaired knee.

“It was really nice that they were able to bring everybody together and do it for me,” Bahr said. “They were like, ‘Hey, we’ll have you be a part of it — tell us how you feel, tell us what’s going on — but you don’t have to be in the middle of trying to figure everything out.’ I was still involved, just being honest about how I was feeling. That’s how it is with any rehab, but it meant a lot that they were able to get so many resources for me.”

That communication and transparency helped her stay grounded as the process stretched on.

“It felt like every week we were trying something new,” she recalled. “Different exercises, different recovery plans – just hoping something would finally click. It was hard because I wanted to be back so bad but I also didn’t want to rush it and make it worse.”

While she would end up missing the 2024 fall and 2025 spring season both. Her patience, and the collective effort behind her, eventually paid off.

“Sometimes, especially with really smart people like we’ve got over at football and with our training staff, you just break everything down and start over,” Stone explained. “They changed her weightlifting, changed her fitness, changed her cutting, changed her rehab processes. Literally threw out the playbook and created something just for her.”

After much trial and error, the sports medicine staff landed on a reinvented rehab that worked for her uniquely shaped meniscus that they hypothesized was preventing the traditional rehab plan from working. For the first time in months, Bahr began to feel like herself again. The confusion gave way to progress and with it, relief.

“It was just such a relief to finally know what was wrong,” she expressed. “Once we figured it out, it was like, okay… now I can actually move forward.”

Kylie Bahr’s Return to Form On & Off the Pitch

Kylie Bahr | Shelby Hilliard, Red Raider Sports

Throughout all of this Bahr was still around the team. She was still doing her best to lead, still cheering, still a part of the team in every way she could be. But to her head coach and those around her something was clearly missing.

“Honestly, and I think she knows this too, she was almost unrecognizable,” Stone recalled. “She was not the same person. Kylie is outgoing — she fills the room. When Kylie walks in, you just know some super confident young woman has entered the premises. And when that was taken from her, her ability to exhibit that competitiveness, it definitely changed her personality. It was almost like she was softened, and she didn’t like it, because there was no outlet.”

Without soccer she had nowhere to channel what makes her, her. Then came the turning point.

“The minute the pain started to go away and she got back into practice, I remember one day seeing her, and I was like, ‘Oh, there she is. There’s Kylie,’” Stone said recalling their conversation. “Good to see you. Glad to have you back on the team. And she was like, ‘What does that mean?’ And I said, ‘Man, you were not the same person when you couldn’t compete.’”

Maybe she didn’t realize it in that moment but she knows it now.

“I’ve always been competitive, so to suddenly not have that outlet… it was hard,” Bahr said honestly. “The overall word that I can describe is gratitude. You really take things for granted until it’s taken away from you. When you don’t have it for a while, you just forget how much you really love it. Now I’m just thankful every day I get to play — and it’s so exciting to think about how far we can go this year.”

Then that giddy smile returned — the same one that showed up mid-interview when she started thinking about their upcoming game. The same glint in her eye that her coach saw when she finally got to be herself again.

Macy Blackburn and Kylie Bahr celebrate goal | Shelby Hilliard, Red Raider Sports

But let it be clear, her opponents on the field are faced with anything but a smile. Nothing about playing against Kylie Bahr is joyful actually. Her presence is felt in every tackle, every run, every moment she dictates the intensity of a game.

“She’s back with a vengeance,” Stone said. “She plays with such a fearless nature that it’s contagious. Other players are like ‘dang right, if she’s going, I’m going!’ She just exudes such confidence that other people feed off of it. We’ve had other people like that through the years, but I don’t know if we’ve had anybody any more so than Kylie.”

That confidence is fully warranted too as she’s playing at an all-conference level for a Texas Tech team fighting for its second Big 12 regular-season title in three years, the first coming when Bahr last played in 2023.

“This team is so special, on and off the field,” Bahr answered when asked what sticks out about this year’s team. “The community we have is huge and you can just see it reflected on the field. If I’m down someone’s picking me up, and that’s just the way our culture is. Soccer aside, this group really cares for one another. But on the field, we’ve been blessed with so many amazing athletes and talents. The way we’re able to work together and use our gifts in certain parts of the field is honestly unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s something really special and it’s going to take us far this season.”

In the end, all the rehab and recovery led Bahr back to herself — and to a team just as determined as she is. It feels less like a comeback and more like a continuation, the kind of story that reminds you ‘anything can happen’.


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