Denise Sitton on Fresh Start of Sour Ending

Denise Sitton can close her eyes and replay in her mind the fraction of a second in which she lost an entire basketball season.

It was November, 1984, barely two weeks into the preseason, and the Cal State Northridge women’s basketball team was playing at Pepperdine. Sitton, then a 6-1 junior center, was running up court on offense. As she reached the key, Sitton tried to stop.

“It was just a little two-footed jump stop. I didn’t even have the ball,” she said. “When I landed, my left foot stuck and my knee kept going.”

Sitton said her left knee hyper-extended beneath the knee cap “like a rubber band,” snapping her anterior cruciate ligaments (under the knee cap)and tearing a portion of her medial cartilage.

The injury brought the 1984-85 season to a painful halt, but Sitton, who was an All-California Collegiate Conference center in her sophomore year, has completed a 12-month rehabilitation program and is back as a forward for CSUN.

“Two weeks after surgery, I was on crutches and lifting weights,” Sitton said Thursday as her team prepared to board a bus for the Sacramento Tournament, which begins today.

Sitton redshirted last season and returned to basketball over the objections of her parents. They “said it’s not worth” the possibility of another injury, Sitton said.

Sitton now plays with a brace strapped to her left knee.

And she seems to have returned to the form that attracted college recruiters after she earned all-league honors at La Sierra High in Riverside. She scored 12 points and pulled down 13 rebounds in a game against Chico State last week.

Sitton said the thought of reinjuring the knee is “in my subconscious.” It also may be helping her to play better, she said.

The injury “opened my eyes,” Sitton said. “Before, I’d sometimes play at 80%, just enough to get by.

“Now, I’m going 100% all the time. I know that I may not be out there next week.”