By Matt Gade

605 Sports

HART RANCH — On Thursday, across South Dakota, the 2025 high school volleyball season got underway with hundreds of kids taking part in the first day of fall practice.

For one player, the first day of practice was a little extra special.

The day before, Rapid City Christian senior Faith King texted a photo of herself to her volleyball coach on the one-year anniversary of having ACL surgery in 2024, with a caption, ‘for those who celebrate.’

A year and a day later, King was back with her teammates on the floor of Rapid City Christian’s gym, taking part in volleyball practice once again.

“I was just really excited,” King said of the first day of practice. “It wasn't so much nerves. It's just like ‘I get to play again.’ It's really nice to get back out there. It was really hard to sit and watch (last year). It's just really wonderful to be back.”

Fresh off a school-best state runner-up finish at the 2023 Class A state volleyball tournament, King was heading into her junior year with even higher expectations.

King finished her sophomore campaign as a Class A second-team all-state with 631 assists, 322 kills and 44 aces.

While gearing up for the 2024 campaign, the Comets’ all-stater suffered a serious setback during a volleyball camp in Nebraska that July. 

King said she went up for a ball and when she came down, something just popped. 

“I came down on my foot, and it just tweaked it somehow,” King said. “At first, I thought it was just like, it didn't feel like an ACL. But then we got MRIs done, and I had to have surgery a year ago. They had to take part of my quad to make a new ACL out of it,. It was nine months of PT before I could get cleared between sports again.”

That injury was initially devastating for King, according to Rapid City Christian head coach Krystal Weber.

“She turned around the next day, and she said, ‘Coach Weber, sometimes God takes things away from us to make us realize that we need to focus on something else.’ And so she took it and turned it into a positive,” Weber said. “Then she used her time off to study leadership books, to study what was happening on the court. So to have her back this year, it's just a whole different presence on the court.”

The injury forced the Comets’ setter to have to take a step back and experience volleyball from a new perspective.

King was named a student manager, helping keep stats for the team while watching her teammates navigate the season without one of their top players.

“Even though she's just one person, because of her being a strong outside hitter and her also being a strong setter, when she went down last season, that wasn't just losing one player, that was losing two positions that we had to try to train other people for,” Weber said. “That was a huge hit for our team, plus with her leadership and her experience for playing so many years over the years, that was really a struggle.”

The loss of King forced the Comets to try a variety of rotations and allowed a lot of young players to compete at the varsity level and gain experience they most likely wouldn’t have seen if King had been healthy, according to Weber.

The Comets finished the 2024 season 16-17, falling to Hill City in the Region 8A semifinals, one match shy of the SoDak16 qualifying match.

While the 2024 campaign didn’t go entirely as well as the Comets hoped, Weber and King said the amount of experience and playing time younger players were able to get has set up the Comets for what they hope is a 2025 season similar to 2023.

“This year, you know, we talk about it all the time. Last year, with her injury, it gave a lot of kids the opportunity to come in and get experience last year that they wouldn't have gotten that experience last year,” Weber said. “So now those kids that came in and got that experience, they're at such a higher level now that this team this year is just going to continue to grow and get back to that high level of play.”

Weber stressed that they coach their players to have to play all positions so the team can hit from all three spots and teams can’t focus on just one or two players to take them out of their game, but they can strike from any position.

Rapid City Christian's Faith King set passes the ball during practice Thursday on the first day of volleyball practice across South Dakota. (Matt Gade/605 Sports)

Throughout 2024, King said it was frustrating not being able to be out on the court, knowing what needed to be done but couldn’t. And one of the biggest adjustments she had to make was to become a vocal leader in her new role on the team. 

“It was definitely frustrating, in a way that I wanted to be out there and help them, and I couldn't help them,” King said of being on the bench. “And I've always been kind of like a lead by action person on the court, and so to not be able to do any action, I was having to find, like, a voice in leadership. That's something that I chose to work on while I couldn't do anything on the court. It was definitely frustrating when we'd get into tight matches and I couldn't be off there.”

Weber said she could tell King was frustrated by her inability to be out on the court with her teammates, but also commended King on her willingness to accept the circumstances and make the best of it.

Weber said that year off created a drive in King to come back, and she was a little nervous at first if King would have the mindset to bounce back, but saw King make the best of the situation, and despite already having a high volleyball IQ, said she studied the sport even more.

King, who hopes to play collegiately, said her teammates, who have become her close circle of friends, really helped motivate and support her journey in coming back and she is excited to play with them.

Following the 2024 season, King continued her rehab and physical therapy and spent part of her time as a teaching assistant for Weber. 

Weber said then in May, the doctors and physical therapists do their best to make sure athletes don’t get their hopes up when they take their return to sport test. 

So when King took it and passed, Weber said she could just hear her smiling through the phone when King called her that night to say she had been cleared.

From there, King said it was such a sigh of relief that her hard work had paid off, but that first time back on the court for club volleyball was a lot of nerves.

“That was more nerve-racking, because we were playing teams that were pretty good all over the region, so I started out kind of in the back row, so I kind of eased my way into it. But I was nervous about, you know, ‘Can I tear it again? Am I going to be able to come back like how I was last time?’”

Coach Weber said she noticed that King was a little timid when she first came back, but after camps and open gyms, Weber said she’s excited for King to be back in the rotation.

“We started off slow, kind of hesitant and wondering whether she's going to be hesitant on balls, or whether she's going to be that aggressive person, and she was doing everything that she was doing before,” Weber said. “As her confidence built this summer, she was ready to start taking on more tasks and going back to hitting, front row and blocking. And so it's been fun to watch her.

“She just had that drive. And so it's so fun to watch her get that enjoyment on the court and to see her smile. And when things start to happen more naturally again, she's not thinking about it. The fire’s back. She just has that aggressiveness, and it's just fun to watch.”

The Lady Comets open their season Aug. 28 at home against Douglas.