AUBURN — Cait Carr cried and cried.
Each day in intensive care, doctor after doctor delivered the same devastating diagnosis.
“You know you’re not playing basketball,” they told her.
Not for at least a year while she was on blood-thinning medication to dissolve a three-foot blood clot running from the back of her stomach to the middle of her left calf.
It was the spring of her junior year at Auburn Mountainview High School and the 6-foot post player had already missed one of the four key viewing tournaments she hoped would lead to a college basketball scholarship.
“I cried a lot,” said Cait, oldest daughter of Lions coach Chris Carr. “To think I couldn’t play my senior year was scary. It was like all my hard work just went down the drain and it was unfair, because I didn’t do this to myself.”
An undetected genetic disorder that affects blood clotting put Carr in intensive care at Swedish Hospital for 10 days last April.
But thanks to more aggressive treatment that broke up the colossal clot, her prognosis period of inactivity was cut from 12 months to six and wound up being four and a half. She returned in time to help Mountainview reach the Class 3A state volleyball tournament, wearing elbow sleeves and knee pads to limit bruising. Now, Carr is enjoying another successful basketball season and was voted SPSL 3A MVP for the second straight year.
The sixth-ranked Lions (20-5) are one victory from returning to the state quarterfinals with hopes of improving on last year’s sixth-place finish. They play No. 7 Seattle Prep (15-7) Saturday at 4 p.m. at Jackson High School in Mill Creek.
Carr averages 17.1 points and 7.1 rebounds even though she estimates she is only at about 75 percent. Her lack of activity last summer resulted in a 15-pound weight gain. She still takes baby aspirin daily to help thin her blood and has regular MRIs to check for clots.
Carr has scored 1,275 points in her four-year career, the school’s first player — male or female — to surpass 1,000. This season has become extra special, not only because it is her last playing for her father and with her sister, Aly, a junior starter, but because it was nearly all taken away.
The disorder could have cost her not only the season, but her life if it had not been detected in time. Normally ultracompetitive like her parents — dad Chris and mom Marla were both athletes in high school in the early 1980s and Marla played college volleyball — Cait has a little different take on basketball these days.
“It kind of like put sports in perspective,” she said. “Now I don’t take a lot of things like playing for granted. Every day I want to go have fun doing what I love, and I couldn’t do that for a really long time. Now it’s awesome just to play. Winning is not as important now. It’s just having fun and playing.”
Of course, she wouldn’t be a Carr if some of that competitiveness didn’t linger.
“Well, winning is kind of important,” she quickly added.
Sandy Ringer: 206-718-1512 or sringer@seattletimes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment