Recruiting Report: Trey Lawrence (2018)
Last spring while playing with Friends of Hoops in a grassroots tournament, Trey Lawrence nearly lost his career after a violent plunge to the hardwood.
After a traumatic head injury and the subsequent emergency surgery, some medical professionals said the 6-foot-5 Glacier Peak guard should never play basketball again.
“I was going up for a dunk and then I got undercut, and I fell back and landed on my shoulder and my head and had to have emergency brain surgery – so that was pretty wild and crazy,” said the Glacier Peak junior.
The first doctor he visited after the surgery said he’d be fine to play again in a year.
But his rehab professionals advised him to never play again. “I wasn’t going to take that as an answer,” said Lawrence.
Then Lawrence got some encouraging news from his surgeon — who was a college basketball player — when the two met in August.
“He said it was a freak accident, and it’s (likely) not something that’s going to happen more than once, and that I should be fine to play come November,” said Lawrence.
“I was never supposed to play again, but I kept to it and I proceeded. And I told people I was going to play this season since the very beginning, and now I’m able to.”
For three months Lawrence — Washington’s 50th-ranked 2018 — had his skull out, to let his brain swell. It was put back in August, that’s when he talked to his surgeon.
Later in August he had his second surgery, and three weeks later he was back on the court.
“Everything was super rusty at first. And slowly but surely I was able to pull it together in time for tryouts,” said Lawrence, who’s starting to become his old self.
“The first week was really rough; I wasn’t myself, and I wasn’t playing how I usually play. But now I’m playing almost to the level I was before the injury, but not quite there yet. And that’s where I am now, and hopefully in the next week, or two weeks, I’ll be all the way back — hopefully by the spring circuit.”
Now, midway through his season with the Grizzlies, Lawrence is just glad to be on the floor, and hopes to make a splash with his recruitment this spring and summer on the 17U circuit.
“My coaches are trying to bring me back into everything slowly, so right now I’m coming off the bench. My role is to do what I’m supposed to do and make the right play, they don’t really want me to try and do anything outstanding yet,” he said.
“Right now it’s just getting back into the flow of playing again, and facilitating and hitting the open shot. And then just making the smart basketball play.”
Lawrence says he was getting some Division II and Division I looks before the injury, and since he’s been back on the floor he’s visited one D1 program.
“Before the injury I was talking to Central Washington University, but that’s been the only D2 school. I’ve talked to some other schools like Seattle U and Grand Canyon University, also Portland and Portland State,” said Lawrence, who visited Grand Canyon in October.
“I’m just hoping to find a college that likes the way I play, and can give the playing time I deserve. And I’m hoping everything will work out and I can go there in the fall of 2018.”