Bounding down the basketball court, Steve Ward suddenly decided that he was going to dunk. That’s all there was to it. The two opponents looming ahead of him and underneath the basket were no threat for he would simply jump over them. At 6-4, that was nothing new for this former state champion hurdler.
Yet as he was inches from performing the sport’s defining action – possibly the grandest means of netting two points in any sport – something went painstakingly wrong. In just a matter of seconds, Ward missed the dunk, landed crooked on his knee, then went up for the rebound and fell to the floor in pain, clutching his knee after bending it completely sideways.
“I knew exactly what happened right when I hit the floor,” said the 20-year old Ward, a Post Falls graduate now a sophomore in Business Administration.
As he lay on the basketball court last year in utter shock, he knew that he had torn his ACL (as well as MCL), and his basketball career was completely over. The doctors told him that he would never play again. They said the reigning state record holder in both the high school 300-intermediate hurdles and the 110-high hurdles was never going to play basketball again.
Perhaps he should have done what many others would have done in his position after graduation.
Winning back-to-back state championships in both hurdling events his junior and senior year, he ignored numerous track recruitment letters from such prestigious and storied schools as Harvard, Notre Dame, Brown University and the University of Oregon. Instead, he desired to play the sport, which he deeply loved, the sport where he snagged team MVP awards his junior and senior years and all-state recognition during his senior season.
He wanted to play basketball.
NIC gave him that opportunity.
So now, after enduring the “freak accident” during his rookie season at NIC, he was left disappointed, heartbroken and shocked to be suddenly catapulted so far from the sport he lived for. But while he loved basketball so, he remained unspiteful.
“You just never know God’s plan,” he said. “It’s just the journey of life, so you can’t be angry. Basketball isn’t everything.”
But then one surgeon proclaimed: “You’ll be back.”
That’s all that was needed to spark a fire inside of Ward. He assembled a support structure in his life: a close friend who possessed an interest in athletes and injuries, his parents, the athletic trainer of NIC, his basketball coaching staff and teammates, as well as his surgeon and physical therapist.
With their help, he returned beyond full strength. When he wasn’t at physical therapy he was in the gym playing basketball, and in only one year pulled a Gale Sayers recovery and returned healthier than before.
“I came back five times stronger, five times faster and I could jump so much higher,” he recalled.
Ward entered this school year in full throttle after months and months of intense physical training. However, during just the third day of school and the third scrimmage of the season, he encountered yet another freak accident.
“I was running down the basketball court in a full sprint,” he says. ”When I came to a stop I tried to pivot and lost my footing, but my knee just couldn’t handle the pressure.”
This was not the same knee as the previous year, so as Ward fell to the floor once again he prayed, “Please don’t let it be serious!”
But it was serious.
The entire training room cleared as he entered in a furious temper. He figured it was all over. He wouldn’t be able to come back this time. Basketball was done.
Yet half an hour later, he remembers it specifically, he came to the awe-inspiring conclusion that maybe it wasn’t over. He would be back-- for he had accomplished it before. Proving to be the resilient athlete he is, he decided to start at Square 1 once more.
It was hard at first, no doubt, and he’ll be the first to admit it was frustrating: for a month and a half he didn’t want to be in the gym at all. But his friends and family, coaching staff and doctors, stuck with him and he persevered once more.
He still can’t play basketball or participate in anything too strenuous for six months, but his surgeon predicts a full recovery just like before.
And that is where we find Ward today.
He is recently off crutches and getting ready for graduation this upcoming spring after three years at NIC. He won’t be playing basketball any time soon, and though his career as a Cardinal was cut extremely while reluctantly short, he yearns to continue on at a four-year program.
Yet with his freshman season being the only collegiate experience he’s had on the game clock, it will be difficult for future coaches to gauge his current talent. He’s considering Boise State University, yet Eastern Washington would be his school of choice.
Indeed, Ward is not stranger to resiliency, personal growth and persistency.
“I’ve never been afraid of hard work,” he says, “and I’ve never had a problem putting in the work for something I really wanted.”
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