Morsette’s journey back
Tuesday evening Chad Morsette, a Beulah senior, scored 35 points against Shiloh. Morsette wanted to return to his best form more than anything. But first, he had to jump on top of a stability block.
It may sound like a simple task but there was quite a bit stopping Morsette from completing the jump. It all started during a fall football game in 2017. Morsette was trying to make a downfield play and got caught in a football scrum.
The Injury
Everyone sees them on Sundays when they watch NFL games. Linemen rush downfield trying to find people to block and the defense charges in creating a mass game of body bumper cars.
Coaches hope at some point during the scrum the ball carrier is tackled or reaches a first down.
Sometimes after the collision concludes a player doesn’t get up and the trainers walk to the field for an injury assessment. That exact situation happened to Morsette at the end of the play. He was the guy not getting up.
This is where Morsette’s basketball dreams got put on hold. Trainer Erik Klindworth remembers the injury.
“I knew right away it was his ACL, just on the sideline. I knew right away. But I wanted to go through the right proper steps and make sure it was. I didn’t want to tell him it was and then it wasn’t,” Klindworth said.
“After he got the diagnosis they made the decision to try some conservative therapy and finally elected to have the surgery in early January. At that point, I kind of knew it was going to be close to getting ready for summer. Because of the number of procedures he had to have done.”
There Morsette was losing his junior season of hoops. He wouldn’t be able to help his teammates reach their goal of a state tournament appearance. Life without basketball broke Morsette.
Life without hoops
“I cried once the doctor said I tore everything. That just broke me because I couldn’t help the team out and we had very high expectations last year,” Morsette said.
Klindworth was Morsette’s trainer for the recovery process and understood the pain, anger, and frustration Morsette felt. Their first step in the recovery process was healing.
There was the physical recovery process, which featured tons of icing and compression but also a mental recovery process. Klindworth said they worked on rebuilding Morsette’s confidence first.
“When he came in, the first time I saw him, after surgery he was in rough shape. He was in a lot of pain. I think it was a little more than he expected.”
“We talked it out and worked hard those first few weeks just trying to get him feeling better and get some confidence. He was down at that point,” Klindworth said.
Recovery process
Klindworth and Morsette built a relationship of trust as they worked through the recovery process.
“I just kept telling him to just trust me, trust the process. I told him this sucks. I told him a couple times it’s OK to be mad, it’s OK to cry – it’s OK. I told him that a number of times early on.”
Once the trust was there, both honed in on getting Morsette back to full capacity for his senior campaign. Klindworth said he pushed Morsette hard during the process. Often times sounding like Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid.
“I knew how much the sport meant to him. So, I wanted him to get back at 100 percent. I pushed him hard. He didn’t like me alike and I told him ‘That’s OK. You don’t have to like me now. You’ll like me when you’re back on the court’,” Klindworth said.
“I don’t know how many times he heard the word ‘again’ from me. But he heard it a lot. ‘Again’, ‘again’, ‘again’.”
Training sessions
They worked on a lot of different drills and exercises but the test to jump on top of a stability block remained the constant. Once Morsette could conquer the block he’d be freed from hearing Klindworth say the word “again”.
Morsette gradually improved and his knee grew stronger. He watched video recordings and started understanding what positions put his knee in danger of re-injury.
He got to the point where he could trust his instincts again and not worry about his knee.
Morsette’s strength
Morsette’s knee healed and he healed. But during the process outsiders could see it wasn’t his knee that was hurting him the most.
But what hurt most was not being able to help out. The only reason Morsette got injured was because he wanted to help his buddies win football games.
When Beulah reached their goal of making the state basketball tournament Morsette broke down in tears and elation at the same time.
Happy because his childhood friends reached their goal of making the state tournament, sad because he couldn’t help them.
“Once the game got over I was happy because we were going to state but I wasn’t out there helping the team. That was the downfall. That’s when I started crying because I couldn’t help the team out for the whole year,” Morsette said.
All the way back
Eventually, Morsette jumped on top of the stability ball and Klindworth was done saying again.
But Morsette’s desire to help his teammates stayed. Morsette’s basketball trainer, Justin Fox, said the desire to help in any way is what makes Morsette a great player.
“What makes him a special player is whether he has the ball in his hands or not – he is doing something to help his team. Whether it be boxing out somebody or guarding someone to try to stop them from scoring, or even scoring – whatever it takes for the team to win that is what he does. He does it not just to satisfy himself, but to satisfy everyone on the team,” Fox said.
Morsette is back and his Modus Operandi hasn’t changed much.
“I’m very happy to be back to be back with the guys playing again. We just have to come out and play hard every night,” Morsette said what drives him.
“Wanting to win, just do whatever it takes to get that win for the team.”