Askins will miss the season with knee injury
WBB: The freshman forward got hurt on the second day of summer workouts
Last June, Murray State’s Cam Hoover was wrapping up her second practice of the summer when she tore the ACL in her right knee, ultimately ending her freshman season before it even began.
Fast-forward 12 months, and lightning unfathomably struck twice within the Murray State Women’s Basketball program.
“(It was) the second day of practice, during a screen-and-roll drill,” Murray State freshman forward Jaidynn Askins remembered. “I was coming off the roll, going up for a layup, no contact, and then when I landed, my knee popped out of place. I tore my ACL, MCL, meniscus, all of that.”
“It's really devastating,” Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner said. “For a kid to have worked as hard as they've worked, to pay the price to get a Division I scholarship to come to our school, and with the expectation that they're going to be an immediate impact player and basically in the gym by yourself. I think the way this one happened just kind of makes you shake your head, because she literally was by herself, and did what she's done a million times — jumped up to get a rebound to put it back in, and the knee goes out. It was just tough. When I got that phone call, I just had a really, really bad feeling, and just prayed that somehow, someway, it wouldn't be worst case scenario. When the MRI came back, it was.”
Askins was hopeful she had just hyperextended her left knee, or maybe it was just a sprain.
“People always said that when you tear your ACL, you will know,” Askins said. “I was like, ‘I didn't hear anything pop, I didn't feel anything.’ I thought I was good.”
Unfortunately, she wasn’t.
“I think they waited a day to tell me after they got the news,” Askins continued. “It was Coach Monica (Evans), Coach Turner and (Athletic Trainer) Greg (Jocelyn). They’re all in this room, and it was like, ‘This is the news.’ I was crying and I was in shock, but it was like — I don't even know what was going through my mind at that point. I think I was just blank, like a deer in headlights, because I was like, just wow.”
This is the third ACL tear within the program in the last year. Sandwiched between Hoover and Askins, junior forward Destiny Thomas tore her ACL during a game last January. One injury is one too many, but three major injuries in one calendar year has Turner and her staff trying to figure out if there’s anything they can change to prevent another one from happening in the future.
“We're looking at what we do,” Turner said. “ACL prevention is part of our work, but two of them happened the second day they're on campus, right? Non-contact injuries on both of them, with no previous injuries to those particular knees. Of course, we go back and we look and we try to figure things out, and what can we do better? These are truly two freak things that happened. With Destiny, could it be wear and tear? She had played several minutes (in the game where she was hurt). She was in toward the end of the season when that happened. But it’s really mindboggling with Cam, and now Jaidynn, the way it happened.”
If there is a silver lining to this entire situation, it’s that Askins has a built-in support system of multiple teammates that have gone through this same injury and have shown her she’ll be able to bounce back.
“They've all pretty much said, ‘If you need anything, need to talk, need to just cry, need help going through this process, you can always come to any of us,’” Askins said. “That's what all of them have said for me, and I feel like I've been handling this process pretty good. I haven't had the moment where I've cried yet, but it's because we're not in season yet. It really hasn't clicked for me that I'm not going to be playing this season, so, right now, I'm good. Going through practice and all this, I'm good, but I know as soon as we're actually going through games and stuff like that, I know that's going to be hard for me.”
“Unfortunately, we've been through this a lot, not just at Murray State, but throughout our entire coaching career,” Turner added. “We kind of know the stages that they're going to go through because they're going to be torn up and, ‘Life is over, I'll never play basketball again,’ all the way to starting to see themselves get better, getting that good report from the doctor, and just making progressions every single day. For Jaidynn to be able to sit over here and see what Cam has been able to do, she's back and full-go, it probably gives her hope to know that if she puts in the work, that it'll be her sooner rather than later.”
While redshirting because of injury isn’t what any athlete wants to do, to paraphrase an old coaching adage, this year will give Askins the chance to give up her worst year to gain her best year when she’s a fifth-year senior. Even though she’s still in the mourning phase about missing this season, Askins is able to see the advantages of an extra year of school. Majoring in exercise science, she wants to be an athletic trainer when her playing days are done.
“For the degree that I want, you need to have a master's degree,” Askins said. “Getting the extra year, I could potentially get that (degree). For basketball (purposes), as a freshman, you're not used to playing on the college floor. So getting this extra year to see and just absorb it, I feel like that would be good for me.”
Soon enough, a new season will begin for the Racers. Askins may not be able to impact winning with her play, but that’s not going to stop her from helping in any way she can.
“I want to be an encourager,” Askins said. “I want to be able to pick everybody up. I'm doing that in practice right now. When I see someone down about not doing this right or that right, I'm like, ‘Okay, you're good. Pick it up. You're good.’ Coach Turner said that when I'm on the bench, I'm going to be helping with stats, so I'm definitely going have to be focused on the game.”
Turner has been impressed with how Askins has handled the early months of rehab, and she has no doubt this is nothing but a minor setback for her freshman forward.
“Just like everything else in her life, she gets locked in, and she takes it head on,” Turner said. “That's just who she is, but that's one of the reasons why I loved her in recruiting and her game. She isn't going to back down to you in any way, and she's not going to back down to this challenge. She's just taking it one day at a time and continuing to get better. She understands that patience is something that’s not easy, but it's something that she's going to have. I do believe she'll come back better than ever.”