|
|
|
Friday, January 5, 2001
Players find success on altered paths
By Mechelle Voepel
Special to ESPN.com
|
Four years ago this time -- back when presidential elections took pretty much just one day -- Georgia's Kiesha Brown and Connecticut's Shea Ralph stood on the precipice of college stardom.
|  | | Georgia's Kiesha Brown is back after suffering two ACL tears. |
Little did they know, they would both get shoved off into the canyon.
Twice.
But now they know all about that -- how the high school player of the year awards, all those Nike, Gatorade and Parade honors don't mean anything when you're on the stationary bike for your millionth mile while it seems like everyone else in the world is playing basketball.
When Georgia and Connecticut meet to open their seasons at the Hartford Civic Center on Sunday afternoon, you will see two players, 6-foot guard/forward Ralph of UConn and Georgia's 5-11 guard Brown, who four years ago wouldn't have expected to be there.
They were the top-honored players out of the prep class of '96, and last season was to have been their senior year. A devilish body part called the ACL put detours in the way of both.
But furious and frustrated as everyone is about the ACL plague in women's basketball, you listen to the kids who are hurt and realize they usually seem to take something good out of it.
"I've never heard of anybody going through life where it's really painless," Brown said. "Mine just happened to be this. To put it in a
broader perspective, it's made me mentally tougher."
Ralph's take: "I can't think about what it would be like if I hadn't gone through all that. I don't think I'd be the same person. I don't think I'd be as insistent, as intense."
For Brown, it was the left knee, for Ralph, the right. Brown's first one happened Dec. 20, 1996, vs. Toledo at a tournament in Anchorage, Alaska, eight games into her freshman year. Ralph's first happened March 15, 1997, while UConn was in the process of obliterating Lehigh in the NCAA Tournament's first round, and after Ralph already had been named Big East rookie of the year.
In other words, Brown was like the tree falling in the forest, Ralph was like the skyscraper collapsing in Manhattan.
Most women's basketball followers never even got a chance to find out about Brown that season, which was the senior year for that great Georgia class of La'Keshia Frett, Tracy Henderson, Kedra Holland-Corn, etc.
Everyone knew about Ralph, and everyone watched what happened to her on ESPN.
Their paths since then have been parallel -- Ralph's in the spotlight, Brown's in the shadows. The summer of 1997, both tore their ACLs for a second time -- just about the point at which they were completing rehab for the first injury. Both had to redshirt the 1997-98 season.
Now, most of you know the rest of Ralph's story. She has beaten not only the knee injuries but also an eating disorder. She was the Final Four MVP last season, leading Connecticut to the NCAA title. She's a preseason All-American on the No. 1 team in the country, which is predicted to repeat its championship.
You have to feel good for Ralph. You have to ache a bit for Brown.
Here's is one of those stories that never got to play out the way it could have.
At the U.S. Olympic Festival in Denver in 1995, before Brown's senior year in high school in Atlanta, she was the most spectacular player on the court. A year later, she was the Saudia Roundtree replacement for Georgia, which started the 1996-97 season with a loss to ranked Clemson but then beat three ranked teams -- Virginia at home and Tennessee and Wisconsin on the road.
But soon after, Brown got hurt, and while she has played in all 70 games the past two seasons, she hasn't had the chance to have the great career she once envisioned. Her career scoring average is 4.3 points. She understands why it's this way.
For Georgia, 1997-98 was the "OK, what next?" kind of year -- all those seniors had graduated, there were the injuries, a frighteningly bizarre sinus infection to Latrese Bush that was eating away her nose, talented but obviously inexperienced freshmen (back when Kelly and Coco Miller really did have a hard time realizing there were three other humans on the floor).
There were seven scholarship players, and at one point, Georgia advertised in the school paper for walk-ons. Yet, as miserable as the season was for coach Andy Landers, it was also a triumph -- Georgia still made the NCAA Tournament and finished 17-11.
When Brown came back the next season, Kelly Miller was entrenched at the point guard. Brown, who may well have been the key to leading that 1996-97 team to a national title had she not been hurt, had become a backup.
|  | | Shea Ralph has overcome two ACL tears and an eating disorder. |
She won't say this, but Brown is not physically the same player as she was before the injuries.
It's luck of the draw -- some people come back as strong from an ACL injury, some come back even stronger. But others lose some small aspect of quickness, some nuance of mobility, and that makes the difference.
But Brown doesn't see the point in thinking about all that. She is what she is now. Why think about yourself as 75 percent? Who comes up with those percentages anyway?
"From a physical standpoint, I'm as good as I'll ever be," Brown said. "The scar -- it's just the remembrance of what happened. I'm not going to say that I lack anything, that's just a mental downing of myself."
Brown looks at Ralph with admiration.
"Coming back from those injuries and winning it all, that's a major accomplishment," Brown said. "All props go to her for doing that."
Sure, there was a time when Brown thought she might be in the same role as Ralph, a star on a big-time team. She's still got the team part. As for the other part ...
"The people who came in the year I had to redshirt, a lot of things happened," Brown said. "The people on that team stepped up to the plate. I applaud them for that.
"For me coming back in, yeah, it was hard because all my life I'd been the go-to person, the one in charge of the ball. But I'm more of a team person now than I ever was. Hopefully, that could be termed as 'a spark.' I'll take that title and be proud of it."
Coaches go through the pain of a player lost to injury in a different way than the player does. The coaches have to move on right away, tell the rest of the kids how they're all going to deal with it -- even if inside the coach feels lost and miserable and hopeless.
Landers was crushed both times when Brown got hurt, but he also had to focus on his team. And he looks at Brown's acceptance of that as one of the highlights of his coaching career.
"It's unbelievable personal growth on her part -- being a person that the spotlight was on, to moving out of the spotlight," Landers said. "To moving off the stage, and then coming back after someone else had assumed the spot that she was proclaimed to have.
"No one planned it that way, certainly. We recruited Kelly and Coco as wing players, but by the time Kiesha got well, Kelly was one of the best point guards in the country.
"Kiesha has grown and learned from that. She's one of my all-time favorite people now because of the growth that she has experienced."
Brown knows that dreams of professional basketball are pretty much out of reach. This season is probably it for her. But being a senior -- that doesn't scare her the way she thinks it might have.
"I think if I hadn't had gotten hurt, my life would be more focused only on basketball," said Brown, who in May got her degree in speech communication. "But from being injured, it's opened my eyes to a lot of other opportunities that I want to take advantage of. I did radio broadcasts for two years while I was hurt, I did an internship this summer.
"I see I do have other talents that I can use."
Yet there is still one more season to play, and Brown is determined that she'll give everything she has.
"My main focus is to leave like I came in," she said. "Loving basketball."
Mechelle Voepel of the Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached via e-mail at mvoepel@kcstar.com.
|
|
ALSO SEE
Women's college hoops preview
|
|
