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Kobe Johnson is celebrating a milestone anniversary this week.

It is the one-year anniversary from when she had right knee surgery to repair her torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), forcing her to miss the remainder of the Davis High School girls basketball team’s season.

And, as the story goes, the Pirates went on to win the WIAA Class 4A championship over Sumner in the Tacoma Dome last March — their first in school history.

“Sitting out was hard,” Johnson said. “I was proud of them. But now that I am able to contribute again, I am excited. I cannot wait to play in the Tacoma Dome.”

After playing in the 1A championships with Wapato High School as a ninth-grader in 2024, Johnson decided to transfer to Davis.

But that summer, after initially injuring her left knee, she opted to treat it through rest and rehabilitation.

During the Pirates’ volleyball season, she re-injured the knee more severely — so badly that her ACL was completely torn.

“It just got worse,” Davis girls basketball coach Akil White said. “But after she tore it, doctors told her she could not do more damage to it. So, she wanted to play basketball.”

Even on a minutes restriction, Johnson showed flashes of playmaking brilliance in the first half of the Pirates’ season.

But then came the decision: Her surgeon informed the family he had an opening for surgery in late January, and that she could repair it then or schedule it months down the road, and miss part of her 2025-26 season recovering from it.

So, she had the surgery the day after the Pirates played Tahoma at the MLK “The Dream” Showcase in Federal Way.

And the months of rehabilitation afterward proved to be grueling.

“There were days I wanted to give up and not keep going,” Johnson said. “But then I’d look back at some old basketball videos, and thought I’d do whatever it takes to be back.

“So I worked out hard, and made sure my shooting form was good.”

Slowly, Johnson is returning to the twitchy-yet-smooth scorer she was before her injury.

Case in point: Johnson drilled four 3-pointers as the team’s much-needed secondary scorer to Cheyenne Hull in the top-ranked Pirates’ 54-48 victory over No. 6 Lake Washington at the MLK holiday showcase Monday in Federal Way.

White called Johnson’s outing a “breakthrough game.”

“She has been trying to figure out how to play on the knee and how to work through that stuff,” White said. “She has done a good job with that.”

Johnson noted she has shed her protective knee brace at practice, and is close to doing the same in games.

“I am at about 95 percent healthy,” Johnson said. “I have to get the rest of my mental game back. Sometimes, I am afraid to shoot the ball, but it is coming back.”