Marble Falls’ Haley Stephens is back on her feet and more determined

JENNIFER FIERRO • PICAYUNE STAFF

MARBLE FALLS — It happened on a routine fast break, filling the lane as she has done thousands of times.

In a game during the 2012-2013 season, Marble Falls High School senior forward Haley Stephens, then a junior, was ahead of the pack, already crossing mid-court in front the other players.

She turned around to look for the ball, which was passed a little too high. She jumped up to catch it.

But when she landed, Stephens fell to the court. The diagnosis was a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

“No one was around,” she said. “I don’t cry very often, but I lost it. Everyone says you hear a pop. But I didn’t hear one. I knew I couldn’t feel my knee. I didn’t know it was going to take me out of the season.”

What followed were months of rehabilitation that forced Stephens to miss the entire track season last school year.

But in March, a former teammate, Kiara Etheridge, was leading her San Antonio Brennen team to the 2012-2013 Class 4A state tournament.

Etheridge had suffered the same injury during the same week a year earlier. Stephens had contacted Etheridge, who offered some hope.

“You’ll get back to where you were,” Etheridge told her. “You’ll get through it.”

Stephens was sitting in the stands of the Erwin Center for San Antonio Brennen’s state semifinal game.

“It felt good seeing (Etheridge) and what to look forward to,” Stephens said.

In all, it took six months for Stephens to return to the court after surgery and physical therapy.

At first, she said, there was a lot of pain. After that, there was a mental hurdle she needed to get past, she said.

That happened during a summer league game this year. She realized her knee could take a pounding from the court and the game itself, and she still could play the way she once did.

“You have to start trusting yourself,” Stephens said. “It scared me a lot. I was kind of babying it. But once I figured out it was going to be fine, I started playing a lot.”

She also credits head cross-country coach Anthony Torns. The cross-country team started summer workouts soon after school ended. Stephens is a member of the girls team. She said Torns’ workouts got her back into shape, and his words of encouragement were even more helpful.

Stephens is a part of a class that didn’t lose a girls basketball game at Marble Falls Middle School, going a perfect 28-0.

As freshmen during the 2009-2010 season, the Lady Mustangs finished third in District 25-4A, which Stephens called the toughest in Texas, and won two playoff games.

But when Etheridge, then a Lady Mustang, suffered her ACL injury the following season, Marble Falls couldn’t overcome the loss of her and missed the postseason.

And without Stephens, the Lady Mustangs suffered the same fate last year.

“In middle school, it was hard to realize what we had done because we were used to winning,” she said. “Once we got to high school, it was a wake-up call. We’ve been playing together since we were in elementary school. This is what we’ve been waiting for. We wanted to prove we could do it.”

The daughter of Kim and Leslie Stephens will major in engineering at Texas A&M University.

As she thought back to the past year, Stephens said she is more thankful than what she was two years ago.

“I always knew to be grateful for the ability to play and run,” she said. “It’s really different once it happens to you, and you’re forced to sit on the sideline, and it puts it in a new perspective. When I’m having a bad day in practice, I remind myself that, this time last year, I would’ve given anything to play.”

jfierro@thepicayune.com