Kansas baseball pitcher Boede Rahe once wondered whether an elbow injury would end his playing career, but the time away helped him separate his worth from his performance.
“I don’t need to look at a performance and let that determine my worth anymore,” Rahe said.
Speaking with host Annabelle Hasselbeck on Sports Spectrum’s “What’s Up” podcast, Rahe described a comeback that involved more than getting back on the mound. He had to rethink the place baseball occupied in his life — and make room for the faith he had drifted away from.
Before Kansas, Rahe chose Kirkwood Community College in Iowa as a steppingstone toward his Division I dream. Then, he said, he tore the UCL in his elbow and faced a year without the sport he loved.
Kirkwood’s coaches stayed with him, Rahe recalled, even when he arrived unable to compete at full strength. In repeated conversations with his head coach, he questioned whether he wanted to keep playing; the coach’s encouragement helped him rebuild his confidence.
That difficult beginning did not define his entire time there. Kansas’ account of his junior-college career confirmed he missed his freshman season with an injury before earning first-team all-conference honors in both 2024 and 2025.
In the interview, Rahe said he grew up Catholic, with parents who encouraged youth group, but let baseball take over as he got older. Losing the ability to play exposed how temporary that identity could be.
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A teammate’s invitation gave him somewhere to start again: a Bible study with about five people. Rahe began praying, reading and committing to the group, which he said eventually grew beyond baseball to roughly 50 athletes and needed a bigger meeting space.
He pointed to Galatians 2:20, where Paul describes living by faith in the Son of God, as a passage that helped him understand his identity. Rahe’s response to a good game and a bad one, he explained, now includes the same habits: prayer and reading.
The competitive fire has hardly disappeared. His official Kansas biography lists 11 saves in 2026, the most in the Big 12, along with first-team All-Big 12 recognition.
But keeping faith at the center takes a little planning, especially when travel crowds the calendar. Rahe said he got up early, ate breakfast and read Scripture before the day could fill up.
“So making time for the Lord in all ways was what I put my focus on,” he said.
That commitment also followed him into the Kansas clubhouse. Rahe recalled helping start a team Bible study during the spring, when road trips meant missing church on Sundays; he estimated that 15 to 20 players attended the first gathering.
On game days, he said, prayer starts when he wakes up and continues before the game and in the bullpen. Between innings, he asks God for another opportunity to pitch, while acknowledging that the answer may not be what he wants.
Now, as he prepares for his senior season, he wants to welcome new teammates as both a leader and a friend in faith. A teammate once invited him into a small dorm-room Bible study; Rahe hopes to help other players grow, too.
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