God works in mysterious ways:

The last three years have been crazy!! People always ask me how and why did I come all the way from New York to be in Mississippi. My answer is basketball for obvious reasons. Who wouldn't want the opportunity to earn a free college education while doing what they loved to do? So like all freshman, I came with the intentions of the student athlete life being easy. People don't understand it tho.. They usually think we're just lucky and say things like "if they were this tall or that fast or that athletic they would be able to do the same things."--- but it's not that simple. People don't understand how hard it is and that this is a REAL job, not somethin we do during our spare time. We have to deal with adversity just like everyone else does....

My adversity came before I even stepped foot on campus--two weeks prior to flying to the Sip! I was playing pick up in New Jersey when I tried to jump and felt a pop in my Achilles area. (but if you know anything about an Achilles' tear, you would KNOW it was torn because it shrivels up ur calf into a ball, it

sounds like a gunshot, and you cannot move your foot if it's fully torn, So I KNEW it wasn't my Achilles, but I still couldn't tell!) It took me weeks before I could even tell where exactly the pain was at cause my whole foot, ankle, up to my calf area hurt.. I treated it like a regular ankle sprain, iced it and moved on. I got to school and wasn't in A Lot of pain and actually felt good playing.. During my freshman year I had to do A LOT to maintain so I could play!! Got a few MRIs throughout the year that showed it was my left ankle that the pain was coming from. All they could see was a bone bruise, a chipped bone, and loose bodies in my ankle.. As bad as all of that sounds, it's painful, but bearable. To heal that, all u neeed was to rest it for about a month. I didn't have a month so I fought through it and played my whole freshman year.. Fortunately we won the SEC Championship and made it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in years-- After that, I would have time to rest it and would take off from running and puttin any extra strain on my ankle.. Too bad after the break and a few workouts entering my sophomore year, the pain came back. I said it was because I didn't take off enough time off and thought more time was all I needed, so that's what I did... Now I'm entering my sophomore season, feeling good, minor ankle pain, && ready to go to work!! Here comes more adversity tho... My Sophomore season was officially starting in just 2 weeks!! Last few seconds of practice one day, and I'm driving to the basket, jump and my left knee Pops.. This is the gun shot I was talking about! So I tear my ACL, MCL, and have a bruises lateral bone in the left knee. Crazy cause while I was on the table getting my knee examined, I said to the athletic trainer, "atleast my ankle will get to heal now!" (since I wouldn't be able to walk on my left leg, which is the ankle that was messed up) lol.. Out for my sophomore season... months pass by, just got off crutches and starting to walk again... weeks later I start walking slowly on the treadmill, than my ankle pain starts to come back, AGAIN!!! At this point I'm stressed out lol.. I end up gettin another MRI on the ankle, (while my left knee isn't even closed to being healed) but this time they see that a spot of cartilage is missing on my ankle!!???? lol. the reason the doctors couldn't see it before is because I had developed something called an OCD Lesion on my talus bone.. in simple terms, I had arthritis in my ankle because my cartilage was flaking away over that period of time.. Soooo, once again, I have to have surgery. I end up getting cleared to play again mid way through the season but unfortunately never felt like myself for months.. Fast forward to now... I just completed my Junior year. Despite all of that, last Saturday, I graduated. I earned my bachelors in 3 years with honors, and still have 2 years of eligibility to play. I will pursue a master's degree, possibly in MIS or Computer Science over the next two years.

There's more details about the whole thing but I'm dead tired of typing, I gotta stop before I get Carpal Tunnel lol..

I'm still grinding and haven't lost any passion for basketball or any of my goals! I wanna thank everybody who kept supporting me and who still is!! Family, friends, rebel nation, and all of you who knew about everything and helped me through it! Lastly, I wanna thank my girl for having to deal with me more than anybody else! I can't compete with her lol.. she makes impossible things look easy--- things that are wayyy harder than people think. && I know cause I gotta deal with her too lol... she graduated with a 4.0-summa###laude and will be going to medical school in a few months. I told you God worked in mysterious ways, lol!-- He has the steering wheel.

Source: Terry Brutus

Date Posted: Wednesday, May 13th, 2015 , Total Page Views: 1365