In chapel on Aug. 26, Joe Stowell, Cornerstone University’s president, welcomed Katey Kingsbury back to the CU community after her recovery from a car accident on Jan. 23 that took the life of her friend and teammate, Kendra Ross.

Due to the accident, Kingsbury sprained the ligaments that connect the base of her head to her neck. Kingsbury needed multiple surgeries and physical therapy after the accident.

“It was neat to see all different areas get involved,” said Katrina Scheer, CU junior and friend of Kingsbury.  “It was not just the track team who rallied together to support her, encourage her and pray for her. It really was the whole entire Cornerstone community.”

Scheer first met Kingsbury in their announcing and reporting for the media class the fall semester before Kingsbury’s accident.

“It is crazy now that she is back on campus,” Scheer said. “It feels so normal again like we are right back where everything started.”

“It definitely has been long for me, but short in the since of being a short recovery,” said Kingsbury, remembering her time spent in physical therapy. “The doctors are so amazed at how far I am going in such a quick amount of time.”

“I am a junior at CU, but my coach likes to call me a freshman and a half,” Kingsbury said.

Kingsbury described her emotion of being back on Cornerstone’s campus as “an overwhelming sense of peace and reassurance,” that this is where God intended her to be.

“It is good to be back because I get to be with my cross girls and back into a familiar territory,” said Kingsbury.

Kingsbury will resume working at Mission Network News, one of CU’s radio networks, on Sept 3. During her freshman year, Kingsbury volunteered at MNN in order to get involved in radio.

“She did all kinds of ‘grunt work’ for us … filing, stuffing letter, etc.,” said Greg Yoder, executive director and ancher of MNN. “Then we found out she was a pretty good writer. So we started giving her stories to write.”

While recovering from her accident, Kingsbury wrote articles for MNN as part of her rehab program.

“It’s amazing that God has allowed Katey to recover enough to not only come back to the university, but to come back to MNN to help impact ‘the kingdom’ in her writing skills,” said Yoder.

As part of her job at MNN, Kingsbury will write web articles and radio scripts, conduct interviews, do research, basic production and possibly will go on air.

“I am excited for that because I have been working for Greg over the summer in sending me articles that he would want me to write,” said Kingsbury.

“Katey is a great writer,” Yoder said. “She has a way of making a story appeal to our younger demographic. We have been trying to find a way to make MNN more appealing to the younger demographic. What better way to do that then to have young people working for you.”

“She really has a passion for finding the truth and telling the truth and that goes with her journalism type of approach to things,” Scheer said.

“God has really placed on my heart how much of a change he is bringing to Cornerstone with the new president and things to better the program, like the media,” Kingsbury said.

“I think it will be good for Cornerstone and it will change a lot of the negative vibes that I got my freshman year and this past fall,” Kingsbury said. “So I really feel that God is bringing change to Cornerstone, but it will be a good change.”