When Knee Went Out, Heart Kicked In : USC Point Guard Rhonda Windham Battles Back From Severe Injury

Rhonda Windham, USC point guard, can only shake her head when she considers the thousands of times she has gone to the basket for a shot or a rebound.

She’s only 5-foot-5, but with her great jumping ability, Windham has never been afraid to tangle inside with the big girls--on the playgrounds of Harlem, at John F. Kennedy High School in the Bronx, or in the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

So, it was only natural for Windham to charge the offensive backboard when teammate Vickie Mitchell put up a shot in a game at Colorado Springs during the National Sports Festival in June, 1983.

As the ball neared the rim, Windham, anticipating a miss, leaped for the tip-in--just as she had countless times before.

But this time, it was different. This time, her jump was accompanied by a sound track.

Pop went the knee. Snap went the ligaments.

Windham fell to the floor, writhing in pain.

The injury was severe: There was a complete dislocation of the knee and kneecap. All the ligaments in her knee were torn. The leg was mangled, taking a slight left-hand turn at the kneecap. Had there been any damage to the artery, doctors said they might have had to amputate Windham’s leg.

But Windham was lucky.

“It was about the worst knee injury you could get,” said Bob Beeten, Sports Festival trainer. “Most people who go through their lifetimes as athletic trainers will never see anything like that.”

Six days later, Windham underwent surgery at Lake Tahoe for reconstruction of her knee.

Last November, after 16 months of rehabilitation and two more operations, Windham was back in the starting lineup for the USC women’s basketball team.

“As severe as my injury was, I shouldn’t be able to play,” she said. “I tore everything inside my knee. I should have been lucky to walk. But I was very fortunate.”

Windham’s comeback has been astounding. Although she missed her entire sophomore season, she doesn’t appear to have lost any quickness or height on her jump. She leads the 12-5 Trojans in assists, setting the Cheryl Miller Show in motion, and seems as strong today as she was two years ago when she helped USC win its first national championship.

“Tearing just one cruciate ligament is hard to come back from,” said Dr. Richard Steadman, who performed Windham’s initial surgery. “Tearing all the ligaments makes it that less likely. Not many have returned to play at such a high level. I wonder if there are any.”

Windham grew up playing street basketball in New York, where you learn to play tough. There, you pick gravel out of your knees after a game. There, it’s almost a minor victory if you come away from a game with all your teeth.

That’s why this injury was so exasperating to Windham. Had she blown her knee out diving over a fourth-row seat or in the middle of a tussle under the basket, Windham might have understood.

But this was a freak injury. No one even touched her on this trip to the hoop.

“I jumped up and everything changed,” Windham said. “I couldn’t see the sides of the court, and everything was blurry. It felt as if I was suspended in air, like a slow-motion picture.”

She tried to hang in the air because she knew she was in for a painful landing. When she finally hit the floor, she began screaming, first for the trainers, and then for Miller, who had been working out with the U.S. national team in Colorado Springs and was at the game.

Miller sprang out of her seat and rushed to Windham’s side. She held her hand, told her not to cry, assured her that everything would be all right.

But it wasn’t.

“I had never seen anything like it,” Miller said. “I mean, I almost lost it.”

Windham glanced down and saw that her kneecap had moved toward the inside of her knee. She couldn’t bear to look at it again, so she held her arm over her eyes from the time she was carried her off the floor until doctors at the hospital popped the kneecap back.

“There were a lot of people in the observation room, but when Dr. Steadman said he had to pop my knee back, everybody left,” Windham recalled. “Nobody wanted to watch.”

Steadman put a brace on her right leg and had Windham exercising on a passive motion machine, to keep the knee from swelling or getting stiff.

“The next day, I asked if I was going to need surgery, and as Dr. Steadman passed me the box of Kleenex, he said, ‘Yes,’ ” Windham said. “He was really straightforward with me and positive the entire time.

“He told me he’d fix my leg 100% so I could play again. He gave me confidence throughout the ordeal. I never had any doubts. I just knew it would be a long time and I’d have to stick with it.”

The surgery, performed July 5 at Lake Tahoe’s Barton Memorial Hospital, lasted four hours. Steadman repaired the torn ligaments, and also made a new one with available tissues down the side of Windham’s knee.

Windham spent 10 days in recovery, then went home to New York.

Somehow, it figured that Windham would begin her comeback in New York. Growing up there and competing against the rough players breeds the resiliency one needs to come back from months of rehabilitation. Things that would make others cringe seem normal to Windham.

She recalled one summer day at 115th Street and the Foster Projects, in the heart of Harlem, when the Kings Tower Tournament, featuring such players as Pearl Washington of Syracuse, Walter Berry of St. John’s, Jerry (Ice) Reynolds of Louisiana State, and Richie Adams of Nevada Las Vegas, attracted an overflow crowd.

“It was so crowded that day, that this guy couldn’t find a seat,” Windham said. “So, he took out a gun, shot it up in the air, and everyone ran out. He sat down, everybody came back, and the game continued.”

From September, 1983 to April, 1984, Windham spent as many as four hours a day in the trainer’s room, doing leg lifts, stretching exercises, riding a stationary bicycle, swimming and running in the pool.

For a full recovery, though, Windham needed more than therapy. So much scar tissue had accumulated in her knee, that she couldn’t straighten her leg.

Windham underwent arthroscopic surgery to remove some of the scar tissue last April, then had another, similar operation last July. She began running in September.

Windham worked her way back into the lineup and has started all but the two games she missed in December with a shoulder injury. She was rusty at first, but is approaching peak condition. She’s been jumping well, and her timing is good.

“I knew in my mind that I was gonna come back all the way and play the way I once played,” she said. “I wasn’t going to settle for anything less.”

About her only problem is a lack of consistency. Although she leads the Trojans in assists, she also leads in turnovers, most of them the result of forced passes.

She plays with a rigid brace on her right knee, but insists she isn’t concerned about re-injuring the knee.

“I think I’ve been on the floor (diving) more this year than I have in my entire career,” she said. “I put my heart and soul into the game and I can’t hold back. My knee is very strong now.”

Her confidence is even stronger. Overcoming such a formidable injury has given Windham a sense of invincibility.

“If I got shot, I wouldn’t feel it,” she said. “Bullets will bounce off me now. I feel I can do anything I want to.”

Women’s college basketball needs Cheryl Miller. Her sheer talent and spirited personality have contributed largely to the sport’s popularity.

But women’s basketball could use a few more Rhonda Windhams, too. Her exceptional ball-handling skills, her between-the-legs dribble, and her no-look passes add another dimension to an often methodical sport.

Windham is a disciple of the City Game. She learned her trade on the concrete courts of Roberto Clemente State Park in the Bronx, on the hard tops of Rucker Park in Manhattan, on the playgrounds at 115th Street and the Foster Projects.

The game thrilled Windham, who rode her bike around New York every summer, searching for a hoop and a bouncing ball. When she wasn’t playing, she was watching.

“People came to games in Harlem to have a good time, and you liked to get the crowd involved,” Windham said. “They loved to see razzle dazzle--between the legs, no-look passes, passing around the back--and they loved to see people slamming--backward, sideways.

“People loved excitement, and the players were hotshots. They thought they were all-world and stuff.”

Windham didn’t begin playing basketball until she was in sixth grade. She was a decent gymnast until her cousins in Delaware introduced her to the round ball.

Windham caught on quickly. Her speed and natural athletic ability set her apart. She was good enough to start as a freshman at John F. Kennedy High, and as a senior she led the team in scoring with a 22-point average.

Kennedy was city runner-up twice and won the championship in Windham’s junior year. She earned all-city and All-American honors as a senior.

“Unfortunately, the term we use most often is that she played like a boy,” said Kathy Hammels, Windham’s high school coach in the Bronx.

Actually, that wasn’t description enough. She did things most boys couldn’t do.

She’d make passes when you thought she was going up for a shot, quick passes around her back, and her jumping ability and speed were amazing. She would frequently get a rebound, throw the outlet pass, then get to the other end of the court in time to score the basket.

“She used to be like a female Dr. J,” said Windham’s brother, Bill, a senior at 5,000-student Kennedy High. “Not that she could dunk, or anything, but her moves were natural. I went to most of the home games, and she could have scored 45 points a game. She just chose to pass a lot, but when she shot, it was usually in.”

Because most of her high-school games were blowouts, Windham rarely played a full game. She got her toughest competition after the season, when she played for church teams in summer tournaments.

In her junior and senior years, she played for Riverside Church, where the men’s team had players such as Berry and Chris Mullin, from St. John’s, Kenny Smith, of North Carolina, and North Carolina State’s Lorenzo Charles. The women’s team was loaded, too.

Windham played with a lot of college players, but there were others who never made it out of the city.

“A lot of people fall into the trap,” Windham said. “Some of my friends got pregnant--good players who had a chance to go to school--some messed up in school, maybe because they didn’t have people at home telling them how important school was.”

Windham did.

From Midtown Manhattan, a D-train ride uptown to Kings Bridge Road, and a cross-town bus west to Kings Bridge Terrace takes you to the Windhams’ apartment building, which overlooks the Major Deegan Expressway and the Hudson River in the Bronx.

In her sixth-floor apartment, Kim Windham, undisputed head of the household, presides over her two sons, Bill, 17, and Chandler, 15, and her other daughter, Robin, 16.

“Our house wasn’t like a democracy,” Kim Windham said. “It was a dictatorship--I’m the dictator. It has to be like that, because children need guidance. They had their input, but when the final word went down, it had to be the word of the law. And I was the law.”

Kim Windham, an elementary school teacher at P.S. 91 in the Bronx, grew up in New York. She knows of the evils that can influence kids, so she made a point of educating her children, stressing right and wrong.

“Everyone grows up around New York City with the knowledge of drugs and stealing,” Rhonda said. “Either you’re gonna get involved with it or you’re not. In my family, it wasn’t even thought about. My mom always encouraged us to be our own person and not to let anyone else influence you to do something negative.

“My mom was always in charge. She had a big thumb over us at all times. There was no need to even try to get out of line. She didn’t have to beat us. We were scared just by the way she talked to us.

“When we were younger, she’d take us on a bus, and we’d sit there with our hands folded, quiet. People would tell her, ‘You have such good children.’ We’d see other kids running around, screaming, but we wouldn’t even think about doing things like that, because it would be all over.”

Said Kim: “You have to keep your hands on them. They know I love them, but they also know I crack ribs. I don’t brutalize, but I don’t play when it comes down to locking horns. I’m an enforcer.”

It was quite a cultural shock.

Windham’s upbringing seems to have provided her with the perfect qualifications for a point guard. She’s feisty enough to spark a team, yet she has the discipline to control the offense, and her city flare always adds excitement.

“I remember our first day of practice at USC, Rhonda whipped a pass around her back that hit my numbers so hard it knocked the wind out of me,” Miller said. “I was shocked because I was used to a bounce pass or chest pass. She looked at me and winked, sort of to say, ‘You’re in with the big girls now.’ That was my introduction to Rhonda.”

Miller’s first encounter with Windham actually took place through the mail. Before Miller had committed to USC, before they had even met, Windham wrote Miller a letter, saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be on the national championship team next year.”

“It also said that if I didn’t go to USC, whatever team I played on, she was going to beat me,” Miller said. Miller finally met Windham at the All-American Games in Syracuse, N.Y., where Windham introduced herself.

“She said she couldn’t wait to play with me next year, but I told her I hadn’t even signed yet,” Miller said. “She said, ‘You will. You will.’ ”

Miller and Windham were roommates for their first two years of college and are best friends. To Miller, two things about Windham stand out--her maturity and her sense of humor. There’s an obvious explanation for her maturity.

“My mother really raised us in a unique way,” Windham said. “She made us independent, so that we knew how to take care of ourselves. We talked about things as a family, about what’s going on in the world.

“If you do that at a young age and try not to pamper kids and hide things from them, they’ll grow up. I grew up while I was home, so when I went away from home, I knew how to take care of myself.”

Her sense of humor, though, is not as discernible. Windham usually has that serious look on her face, on the court and off. She’s a good student--she has a 3.4 grade-point average--a leader who sets goals and knows how to obtain them.

“She’s the most mature player on our team, but around me, she can loosen up and be Rhonda,” Miller said. “Sometimes, we’ll just look at each other and start laughing.”

Except when the subject turns to that traumatic day in Colorado Springs. Then, tears come to both players’ eyes.

“I don’t think I could have come back from that injury,” Miller said. “I’d be too scared to play. That Rhonda is playing is a miracle. She’s a fighter, and she’s gonna go far in life, because when she hits a wall, she goes over it.

“She’s an example of when there’s a will there’s a way.”