For Brittney Sykes, the hardest part of getting injured was not knowing.

As she shrieked in indescribable pain on the Memorial Coliseum floor during the first round of the NCAA tournament, she didn’t know what happened. She didn’t know as she sat on the bench for the second round or on the plane ride home the next day.

She didn’t know what to say when all her friends and family asked her what her injury was.

“I’m laying in the machine to get my MRI, now I’m just waiting for the results,” Sykes said. “It was those first few days of not knowing what’s going on. I didn’t want to speak anything into existence.”

Last season ended in an instant for Syracuse’s most important player. But eight months later, as the Orange prepares to begin its second year in the Atlantic Coast Conference, she’s preparing her return from tearing her right ACL and meniscus in the Orange’s first-round tournament win over Chattanooga on March 22. Sykes will play this season, though there is no exact timetable for her return to the court.

But as the 2014 season is set to start for SU on Sunday at noon against Fordham in the Carrier Dome, Sykes is beginning to revert to her old form. Even better, the preseason first-team All-ACC guard said her rehab process has gone quicker than expected.

“She is moving around, she is shooting the ball. And we expect her to come back at some point in the season,” SU head coach Quentin Hillsman said of Sykes, who led the Orange with 16.6 points per game last year. “And obviously, when she comes back, she makes us that much deeper.”

Normally someone that could be seen playing the game with a childlike exuberance, Sykes hobbled to the bench after being evaluated by trainers against Chattanooga. Her eyes were red, crutches were under her arms and she feared that her team wouldn’t win its first-ever NCAA tournament game.

Sykes was on crutches for a week and a half after her surgery before getting a post-operation brace. When her brace came off, she said she felt, in a way, back to her old self.

There weren’t long, tiring treks up the hill on University Place, and there weren’t people coming up to her in class every day to ask what had happened to her.

“There were so many little things that I took for granted,” Sykes said. “My closest friends laugh at me all the time when I tell them that I enjoy taking the steps, because six months ago, I couldn’t even walk up one step.”

For Sykes to get back on the court from this injury, she had to stay in Syracuse all summer. Each day, she’d wake up to get treatment at 6 a.m.

She did squat exercises, lunges, leg lifts and even some upper-body exercises. Her favorite, though, was just walking.

She leaned on close friend and SU point guard Maggie Morrison, who went through the same injury. She relied on SU men’s center DaJuan Coleman, who also spent the summer rehabbing at the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center right next to her.

Sykes talked to anyone who would listen — people that had been through an ACL injury and people who hadn’t.

“It’s hard because when you’re playing, you’re like, ‘It’s never going to happen to me.’ That’s how I was, too,” said Morrison, a transfer who tore her ACL during her freshman season at Vanderbilt. “ ‘It happens to everyone but it’s never going to happen to me.’ I think that was the biggest thing, just accepting it’s happened.”

Sykes — who dressed for practice Wednesday morning but didn’t participate — said there are still some days when it’s hard, when she wakes up and the knee is sore. But the injury serves as her motivation. Throughout the process, she said, there have been more ups than downs.

She’s the face of the program. She’s the type of person that climbs up the base of the hoop and challenges the team’s center to 3-point shooting contests. And she’s the type of player that has hit two buzzer-beating shots in her first two seasons.

That was all temporarily taken from her, and now she’s had to earn it back.

“I always worked hard for everything I have, and I feel that I’ve never been given anything,” Sykes said. “This is one of the biggest things that I have to say that I’ve worked the hardest for.

“And that’s to get back up.”

Published on November 13, 2014 at 12:25 am

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3