Rainier High School senior guard Bryn Beckman made a move she had made a million times before on the basketball court during an AAU tournament in California in July. ‘
But the million and first nearly cost her her senior season, one that was set to have high expectations.
Beckman ran down the floor and took a quick stop, putting all of her weight on her right leg, and she felt her leg hyperextend. But the hypercompetitive senior thought nothing of it; this was her final summer in the AAU circuit and she wanted to finish it the way she wanted. So she played through it for not only the rest of that game except for the final three games of the tournament and four games at a national tournament in Chicago.
“This was my parents’ first time going to Chicago to watch me play. I played in four of the six games there, and toward the end, I couldn’t push off of it at all,” Beckman said. “I was like, ‘OK, there’s definitely something wrong.’”
She struggled to straighten or lift her leg, so she visited a trainer at the tournament who told her that she should schedule an MRI at a walk-in clinic to look at her meniscus when she returned home. The results found that Beckman had tore her meniscus on both sides of her right knee. Her doctor told her that surgery wasn’t recommended for younger athletes because the meniscus can’t repair itself. She was told to give it a couple weeks of rest and it would feel better.
Beckman continued to shoot hoops every day and go biking, but her knee continued to feel worse. Her doctor referred her to a surgeon, who recommended surgery.
“By this time, it was about early September. I had no idea if it was going to be just a trim, which is a two-week recovery, or the repair, which is four to nine months,” she said. “It was a little scary going into that.”
When Beckman awoke from the surgery Sept. 19, eyes half open and her leg in lots of pain, her surgeon was excited to share the results of the surgery. But the news wasn’t all that joyful for one of the captains of the Rainier squad.
“He’s like, ‘Surgery went so great,’ and I was like, ‘OK, great. My season’s back.’ But then he told me that they actually had to trim one side, so that’s the short recovery, but repair the other and they actually stitched quite a bit of it back together,” Beckman said. “I guess there was a tear that went down my face. I was trying to really hold it together because this wasn’t what I was hoping for.
“At that moment, there was no part of me that thought I was gonna be able to play. I did not think I was going to get my season back,” she continued.
Beckman had to accept the fact that she might not be able to handle the unfinished business with her Mountaineers teammates after a shorter-than-expected trip to the 2B state tournament last winter. The team, led by fellow seniors Angelica Askey, Brooklynn Swenson, Janess Blackburn, and Beckman, dubbed the season “our redemption year.”
But the even more painful pill Beckman realized she might have to swallow was that she may not get to play with her little sister, Lexi, who was entering eighth grade and would be playing on the varsity team in the winter.
“Playing with a group of girls that I’ve known since elementary school is really huge, so I really wanted that sense of finality. I never got that through AAU because of the injury,” she said. “Potentially not having the opportunity to play with my sister really sucked. It wasn’t so much that I want the state championship. It was more that I want that sense of finality and I want to play with these girls one last time.”
While Beckman was stuck in bed resting her knee, unable to move without crutches for six weeks, her siblings, Lexi and Ty, along with her teammates, had open gyms on the weekends, which gnawed at her.
“It would eat me up. I used to go at least three times a week in the mornings to open gyms and get a workout in. That was definitely hard,” she said. “That was the longest time I’ve gone without touching a basketball.”
Beckman was also afraid to lose the progress she had made building strength in her legs and explosiveness on the court. She went from being as strong as he had ever felt on the court to having to putt around on crutches.
“I felt like I was at a point in my career where I finally got the explosiveness that I wanted and I had built a lot of muscle mass in my legs. It took a lot of time and effort,” she said. “It was really depressing that I was gonna lose all of that progress and start from square one.”
Beckman was on crutches from surgery until Halloween and was instructed not to put any weight on her leg. Her surgeon told her to pretend she had a bag of potato chips under her leg and she cannot squish the chips. But she immediately went to work in whatever limited ways she could; she attended physical therapy starting the day after surgery, and she was able to bend her leg that day. The therapy was tedious but productive, as Beckman did calf raises and drew the alphabet with her feet to maintain her muscles.
One of the battles that she had to fight throughout the process was learning not to immediately sprint once she received approval to walk with a brace on her knee. Her family and friends kept her in line, including her father, RHS Principal John Beckman, who told her, “Don’t be a knucklehead.”
“I’ve definitely done this in the past where I’ve gotten approved to do one thing and I take that 10 times worse. When I was told I could run, I was running right away. That’s just who I am,” Beckman said. “I want to get back to it, and I always want to stay in shape, even if the season’s far away.”
Beckman credited her siblings and her teammates for being her support system through her lowest moments. They sent her messages of support after her surgery; one teammate even sent her a basket of gifts.
When Rainier’s basketball practice started in November, Beckman had to work on her physical therapy on one side of the court while her teammates did drills on the other side of the court. She shot flat-footed jumpers and free throws, occasionally looking back at her teammates and her sister and wishing she could be with them.
“Those first couple weeks of practice were really rough. It was really difficult watching my little sister out there without me, but I had to stay positive,” she said. “It’s a different perspective trying to be a leader on a team that you’re not able to practice or play with or be with every second.”
But her teammates made an effort to keep her involved. Swenson always had her break the huddles at practice, and her coaches always made sure she felt included.
John Beckman said it was fun to watch his oldest daughter attack recovery head-on without any guarantees that she would get to play her senior year.
“Anyone that knows Bryn knows her determination and she was going to do everything she could. It was brutal for her as she sat on the sidelines. I will never forget when she came into practice enthusiastically letting us know that she was cleared to go,” he said. “I think that was a testament to her hard work and determination.”
Beckman got approved to fully practice in mid-December, and less than a month later, one of her teammates, junior guard Jazzlyn Shumate, went down with a knee injury, furthering the need for experienced guards with a road test at Adna looming.
Her coaches asked if she was ready to make her return in one of the biggest games of the season, and she indubitably said “yes.” Beckman came off the bench and received a roar from the Rainier section in the Adna gym.
“Going into that game, I thought that I was gonna go in if there’s foul trouble or if they really need me. That was not the case,” she said. “It was pretty surreal going out there.”
Beckman made her return to the starting lineup Jan. 17 in her first home game, where she received a much bigger welcome from the Rainier faithful. She has quickly gotten her groove back and is providing veteran leadership, defensive intensity and 3-point shooting prowess for a Rainier team that finished the regular season 17-3 and second in the Central 2B League.
After her high school journey is complete, Beckman aims to pursue a career as an orthopedic surgeon after being around surgeons and doctors on numerous occasions. She hopes that, if she is able to land a job in that field, she can make some changes.
“I would like, potentially when I’m in my future career, to fix the disconnect between athlete, surgeon and physical therapist. While my surgeon and physical therapists were great, there was that two months where I was left questioning what to do,” she said. “Any way that I can help athletes further their career and get back to the sport they love as soon as possible is really what I want to do.”
