Tori Yurt has played soccer since she was 3 years old. But she now has an even greater appreciation for the sport after missing nearly a year due to injury.
Tori, a sophomore at Penn-Trafford High School and club player for Century United in Pittsburgh, tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) in her right knee in September 2024.
After undergoing reconstructive knee surgery at UPMC and physical therapy at UPMC Rehabilitation Institute, Tori is back on the soccer field again.
“The hardest part of the injury was the whole mental side because you don’t really know what your life is without soccer,” says Tori, 15. “What I’ve grown most out of this injury is don’t take anything for granted because you don’t know how lucky you are to be able to do the things you love.”
A Sudden Injury
Tori’s freshman year season got off to a strong start. She was one of Penn-Trafford’s top contributors, scoring seven goals, including a hat trick.
However, in the sixth game of the season, Tori and the opposing goalkeeper collided as they went for a loose ball. Tori says she felt a pop in her right knee and knew immediately that it was a serious injury.
“For a second, it was painful, but I was more sad because I knew I was out,” Tori says. “I knew what it was.”
“People know Tori, and she is very tough,” says Erica Yurt, Tori’s mother. “She has never gone down, I don’t think, or ever come out of the game. She just plays through it all. The stands got quiet because she went down and just let out this scream.
“It was deafening; it just quieted the whole stands, so we knew that it was significant.”
Penn-Trafford’s athletic training staff assessed Tori at the game and said it was likely an ACL tear. They also said Tori could have a torn MCL and torn meniscus.
Two days after the injury, Tori and her family met with Volker Musahl, MD, orthopaedic surgeon and chief, UPMC Sports Medicine.
“He’s so compassionate and reassuring,” Erica says of Dr. Musahl. “You deal with doctors all the time, and his bedside manner is incredible. He just instills confidence in you. There’s just something calming about him when he’s around you.”
Dr. Musahl ordered a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam of Tori’s knee. The imaging confirmed that Tori had a torn ACL and MCL, but the meniscus was intact.
Erica says Tori faced her diagnosis with a positive attitude.
“It was hard to hear, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it now,” Tori says. “I just had to be positive and attack what came at me.”
Moving Forward With Surgery
Dr. Musahl held off on performing Tori’s surgery for six weeks to see if her MCL would heal without surgery.
She wore a brace that was locked straight to help the MCL heal. She also took part in physical therapy to strengthen her leg before surgery.
“Those (weeks) were definitely rough because you couldn’t really do anything about it until surgery,” Tori says. “It was just a waiting game.”
Ultimately, the MCL needed surgical repair, too. Dr. Musahl performed the ACL and MCL reconstruction in mid-October 2024.
Three days later, Tori started physical therapy with Makenzie Zeh, DPT, at the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex in Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood.
Tori says she was glad to start the recovery process so quickly.
“The first three days (after surgery), I didn’t do anything — I was just lying in my bed,” she says. “That’s not me. I’m always doing something. Knowing that I started really quickly and was able to start getting back, and knowing that everything I would do day by day would help get me back, that helped me.”
On the Road to Recovery
Tori bonded quickly with Makenzie and the rest of the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute staff.
“She was amazing,” Tori says. “She’s hard on you and knows what your goal is. I’m more shy, but I was able to talk to her about anything. She’s so positive, and she knows what the angle is. Day by day, she would get me stronger every time.”
Because of the seriousness of Tori’s injury, her physical therapy began slowly. The work included blood flow restriction (BFR) exercises, as well as straight-leg lifts and knee bends.
“It was the same thing for probably a month,” Tori says. “That was hard because I felt like I wasn’t seeing much progress because I was doing the same thing all the time. But it was just trusting the process and knowing that everything I did would get me back stronger.”
For the first six weeks after surgery, Tori had to continue to wear her brace and use crutches. The first milestone came around Thanksgiving, when she no longer had to use the brace or crutches.
“It was huge, especially because she was traveling with her club team the first or second week of December,” Erica says. “They qualified for a national tournament out in California, so she really, really wanted to be able to be with her team out there. It was huge for her to be past the brace and the crutches.”
The next milestone came when Tori was cleared to start jogging three months after her surgery. Makenzie gave her a structured plan that alternated jogging and walking.
“That was a good one because I was allowed to move again,” she says. “It just gave me another thing to work on.”
Seven to nine months after surgery, Tori’s workouts began to incorporate more soccer-specific movements like sprinting, cutting, and jumping.
UPMC cleared Tori from physical therapy in July, nine months after surgery. By then, she says she was starting to feel close to normal again.
“Since Tori’s injury, so many friends of ours have gone through the same thing,” Erica says. “I tell them all the time the difference a good therapist makes. Because it’s not just going to therapy: This is a relationship over the course of a year. It has been so valuable to Tori to be with somebody that she likes to go see every day.”
Getting Back to 100%
Tori is sitting out her sophomore high school soccer season as her recovery continues. She’s slowly incorporating light contact into her soccer workouts but hasn’t gone into full contact.
Her goal is to feel ready when her club soccer season begins in November 2025. She says it’s “amazing” to return to the field.
“Having it taken away from you, you just realize how much you took it for granted,” she says. “You just don’t know how lucky you are until something like this happens, and you realize what it meant to you.”
Tori says she grew stronger in her faith after her injury and during her recovery. She also had the opportunity to spend more time with her friends, which she appreciated.
Tori says she’s thankful to her team at UPMC, from Dr. Musahl to Makenzie and beyond.
“It was amazing,” she says. “They’re all so positive. I would be with Makenzie, but there would be other people, other workers there, who would cheer me on or say, ‘How was your day?’ or do other things to make me happy.
“That was so important because they know how hard it is on the mental side, and they’re just all so positive and have great personalities.”