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Karsyn Huskey entered Polk County as a freshman intent on making her mark as a soccer player.

She’ll walk across the graduation stage next week as a new Wolverine alum – and soon-to-be Division I athlete.

One of the more remarkable stories in Polk County’s athletic history added its biggest chapter Wednesday morning as Huskey signed a letter-of-intent to run cross country and track at Gardner-Webb University, doing so in front of family and friends in Polk County’s auditorium.

Polk County head track coach Alan Peoples is a man rarely at a loss for words. Yet even he struggled to summarize the journey that Huskey made to reach Wednesday’s signing.

“I don’t even know what to say about somebody that’s come from that far down,” Peoples said. “To get knocked down and run over, and then get back up and do what she’s doing. I just can’t find enough to say it.

“In a sense, she’s my little hero.”

Huskey had never run competitively until joining Polk County’s indoor track team her freshman year, looking to help boost her fitness for the spring soccer season. She finished as part of two state runner-up relay teams, then joined the outdoor track team and won the conference 400-meter championship.

But during the final race of that conference meet, Huskey collapsed on the track in obvious pain – a problematic knee injury had resurfaced. She eventually had medial patellofemoral reconstruction surgery in August 2022, sidelining her for all of her sophomore season.

That meant restarting a running career that had barely begun anyhow. And now Huskey has come from that low to Wednesday’s high in less than two years.

“My opponents have been doing this since middle school,” Huskey said. “I didn’t have that opportunity because my middle school didn’t offer it (Huskey didn’t attend Polk County Middle). And then just my freshman year before I had the whole break because of my injury.

“And then my junior year, I had to work back. So I really only had one year, and I think I made a pretty good comeback.”

Indeed, it’s been a pretty good senior season for Huskey. She earned all-state honors last fall after finishing sixth at the 1A cross-country meet. She shattered the 1000-meter school record at the state indoor meet, placing third in 3:04.66.

She won the conference 800-meter title and ran three other races in helping Polk County capture its first team conference championship since 2021. She then placed second at last week’s 1A West Regional and will look to cap her career with a state title at Friday’s 1A meet in Greensboro.

A pretty good return, for certain. Peoples think it’s just the beginning.

“No question she can be better,” he said. “She had to start back from zero, so she’s done all of this with two years or less of training. Inside, there’s a little monster.”

Helping drive Huskey’s success has been Polk County assistant coach Dewayne Elliott, who took Huskey on as his personal project, researching the best way to train her in the wake of the injury. The father of two daughters who both ran in college, Elliott began telling Huskey the same path could be hers. Gardner-Webb soon reached out to say the same.

That merely added motivation to Huskey’s comeback.

“For the workouts during my junior year, I just had to build up my strength and do physical therapy,” Huskey said. “But my senior year, that actually pushed me a lot. It helped.”

Huskey will be running both cross country and track at Gardner-Webb. She plans to study pre-veterinary medicine with the goal of eventually going to veterinary school.

First of all, though, there’s the matter of Friday’s state meet and her final run as a Wolverine.

She wants it to be as memorable as the past two years.

“I want to break the school record,” Huskey said.

Undoubtedly, she’ll give it her all to do just that.