Lane Baker poses for a photo in his football jersey outside Adna High School Monday morning.
Lane Baker poses for a photo in Pirate Stadium at Adna High School Monday morning.
Lane Baker’s high school basketball career lasted exactly 40 minutes — and it almost cost him his football career.
Baker, a senior at Adna, is better known as a fearsome lineman in the vaunted Southwest Washington 2B Football League, which culminated in garnering Associated Press all-state honors after a stellar junior season with the Pirates in 2019.
But after four years of pancaking defensive linemen on one side of the ball, and wreaking havoc to opposing offensive lineman on the other side, he wanted to try something different. Being an athletic 6-foot-3 and 255-pounds, he figured he could prove valuable to the basketball team. Heck, it was his final year of high school. Why not?
“I was going to do it this year because it’s my senior year and I don’t play any sports in the winter,” Baker said.
That endeavor lasted less than an hour. In the team’s first practice over the summer, and Baker’s first time playing basketball since fifth grade, an unfortunate turn of events occurred.
Jumping for a loose ball, Baker planted his right foot, which landed half on concrete and half on gravel. The uneven surface twisted his knee in an unnatural position and he collapsed onto the ground.
Baker had never suffered a serious injury in his entire life, no sprains, no broken bones, nothing. So he had nothing to compare this to. Something just felt off.
Anytime an athlete injures a knee in any capacity, one of their first thoughts is the worst: a torn ACL. Baker had heard people describe it as feeling like their knee was on fire. His knee definitely didn’t feel on fire. It didn’t even hurt, it just felt numb from his knee down.
Baker pulled himself from the concrete and walked around for about 10 minutes afterward to see if the numbness would go away. It didn’t. He went home and continued to walk around on it gingerly for a couple days before getting crutches.
Four days after the injury, he went to the doctor to get magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to see if there was a major injury. It took a week or two to get the results back, which confirmed that he had tore his ACL.
“It was hard,” Baker said. “I knew I was going to have to get that surgery, and I knew my chances of playing football for senior year, if we ended up having a year, were pretty slim.”
He began working out his upper body while waiting for surgery, keeping his head down and his spirits high, as fall football season was delayed multiple times due to the pandemic.
“Just trying to stay busy, I guess, is what helped me get through that,” Baker said. “Staying busy consistently in the weight room, I think that helped a lot.”
Six months have passed since his surgery, and Baker is already running, sprinting, lifting and squatting with his legs again in physical therapy. Though not quite 100 percent and back to his original form yet, his doctors want him to wait at least three more months, with another three more than that being optimal for his return to competition.
The normal recovery time for a torn ACL is eight to 12 months. The week that practices start at Linfield will be the year anniversary of his surgery date. A perfect coincidence.
“I’ll be more than ready to go out there and start practice,” Baker said.
Baker had multiple college programs reach out to him before he injured his knee, the first one being Linfield University, located in McMinnville, Oregon. The tough part was having to get back on the phone with all of them and reveal that he had torn his ACL.
“I was nervous that some schools were going to lose interest, but after I called Linfield and Pacific, they both said the same thing,” Baker said.
Both programs said the knee injury wouldn’t affect their recruiting process for him. Not only did both have faith he would recover and be ready to go once he arrived on campus, but the state’s high school sports were still up in the air due to the pandemic. No one was sure if there would even be a 2021 high school season.
“I don’t think they were too worried about getting more film of me, because they weren’t sure if they were going to get more film from anybody,” Baker said.
Baker decided to go to the university that reached out to him first: Linfield. He officially committed on Friday, Feb. 12.
“It feels pretty good,” Baker said. “I’m excited to get down there and start playing again. I’ve always had the dream to play football in college. It feels good to finally make that happen.”
In the meantime, he’s attending every Pirates’ practice and helping out the team in any way he can. He plans to travel with the team to every game this year, too. But being unable to play, he’s looking forward to getting back on the field and mowing over opposing players.
