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| Kelly Williams had averaged a double-double throughout her entire career before getting getting injured in December 2018. The road back was a struggle. Photo by Brian Bishop, d3photography.com |
By Nathan Ford
D3sports.com
Kelly Williams didn’t plan on having a senior season.
With enough credits to graduate in three years with a degree in accounting, the 6-3 Randolph-Macon forward would enter the workforce and leave college basketball behind.
But in December 2018 – midway through her junior year – everything changed. Fifteen months later, Williams is gearing up for one final NCAA Tournament with the Yellow Jackets (18-9), who face No. 15 Transylvania (25-2) in the first round at 6 p.m. Friday in Lexington, Kentucky.
“It’s hard to put words into what it feels like,” Williams said.
The numbers from Williams’ 2017-18 season are hard to believe. She led the nation in both points (25.4) and rebounds (18.2) per game, earning All-America honors as her team advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. That came after a freshman season in which she also averaged a double-double (18.5 points, 13.1 rebounds).
She started her junior campaign with 10 double-doubles, averaging 19.9 points and 15.1 rebounds and surely on track for another All-America award. That didn’t go to plan. Williams tore the ACL, MCL and cartilage in her left knee and missed the rest of the season.
Suddenly, she had a decision to make.
“It was awful,” Williams said. “It sucked. I think it put me in a bad mental space. I spent so much time thinking what I could be.”
As she watched her team go 9-7 without her to finish the season 18-9 and miss out on an NCAA bid, Williams made up her mind. She picked up a second major (computer science), underwent surgery and painstakingly worked through rehab to get one more season.
“I didn’t want to go out on the note that my last season as a college basketball player or an athlete at all would be defined by one injury,” Williams said.
She had surgery on Feb. 7, 2019 and got around campus on crutches, with teammates and friends helping carry her backpack and meals. She spent time researching athletes who had returned from injuries such as hers, such as Tom Brady – Williams refers to the severity of her injury as a “football injury.” And she did her best to focus on small steps throughout the rehab process – like walking half-a-mile per hour faster, or being able to jump slightly higher.
But it wasn’t an easy process – mentally or physically.
“Everything that you do, you’re doing it by yourself,” Williams said. “It’s just lonely. You have all this pain and all these things to talk about but there’s not a lot of people who you can talk to, unless they’ve been through it as well.”
Her team helped keep her going. She knew she could get back and continue making a difference in 38-year head coach Carroll LaHaye’s traditionally strong program.
“We were all praying and hoping that she was going to make the decision for herself more than anybody, but certainly we were all hoping for it as well,” LaHaye said.
On Nov. 15, Williams made her return. It was a game against Pfeiffer at Emory & Henry’s tournament – a game Randolph-Macon easily won 80-38. Williams played 13 minutes off the bench, scoring five points and grabbing nine rebounds.
Obviously, those aren’t her typical numbers.
Williams found herself worried that the wobbly feeling from the initial injury would return and she’d fall over, or that someone would run into her and reinjure her knee. She wasn’t the same player.
“I just stepped out onto the floor and just felt like I was out of place. I had never felt that way before,” Williams said. “I guess just because I had been out of the game for so long, I was just shocked.
“It affects you so much differently. At that point in time, when I was out there feeling that way, it was making me think, ‘why did I spend all this time to come back? I’m not going to be the player I was if I can’t get past this mentality.’”
Her doctor told her that, even though she could start playing around nine months after her surgery, she wouldn’t start to feel like herself until about a year after the operation.
Williams kept that in mind and gradually played more and scored more, but Randolph-Macon got off to a 2-6 start. Williams talked to her parents often during that early-season stretch. They helped remind her what an accomplishment it was just to get back in the starting lineup and make meaningful box-score contributions.
It took until a Jan. 25 win against Hollins for the Yellow Jackets to get back to .500 at 8-8. But eventually, the team – and Williams – found their groove, about a year after the surgery.
“We knew we had it,” LaHoye said, “it’s just that early on with our injuries, lack of playing time together and all of that, just kind of frustrated us all and we struggled.”
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| Photo by Brian Bishop, d3photography.com |
Randolph-Macon now has won 12 of its last 13 games and hasn’t lost since a 72-67 setback at Emory & Henry on Feb. 1. Williams is averaging 20.8 points and 13.3 rebounds during this nine-game winning streak and has posted a double-double in all but one of those victories. She had 22 points on 8-for-12 shooting and 15 rebounds in a 68-50 win over Guilford in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference title game, culminating a week in which the “old Kelly” helped the Yellow Jackets return to the dance.
“I don’t know if it was adrenaline or what it was, but I didn’t feel bad,” Williams said. “I felt like normal Kelly running up and down the floor. Maybe it was I had gotten adjusted to wearing a brace. It could be a culmination of a lot of things.”
Whatever it is, LaHaye and the rest of the team are happy to see her happy again – out of the “bad mental space” of the last year.
“I’m just blessed and thankful that she decided to do it,” LaHaye said. “She chose her own path and followed it and did as well as she could.”
For it to end in the NCAA Tournament is “the crowning glory,” LaHaye said. “She has come full circle.”
It wasn’t the path Williams envisioned taking entering college, but she’s standing firmly on it now – knee brace and all.