He Knows Knees Will Carry Him : Prep basketball: Joe Eimers has had 11 operations, but he still manages to play for Santa Margarita High School’s junior varsity team.

Joe Eimers has the face of a cherub and the knees of a war veteran.

You look at him with his large blue eyes, round cheeks and tousled, straight brown hair and you remember the triumphs and trials of being 15 years old.

But then you see his knees.

On his left knee, there are four scars, each nearly two inches long. Near his right knee is another scar, this one more than six inches long and an inch wide.

The scars are a result of 11 knee operations in the last five years for Eimers, who first injured his knees and broke his leg in a bicycle accident when he was 9.

Still, Eimers runs on these knees every day as a member of the Santa Margarita High School junior varsity basketball team.

“I was on my bike,” Eimers said of the accident. “I live on a cul-de-sac, and there was a camper on the corner. I had to go out in the middle of the street to avoid it, but there was a car coming down the street and it swerved, and I swerved, and I hit it.”

The main problem in Eimers’ case was his age, said Dr. Stephen Bayley, an orthopedic surgeon and director of the sports medicine clinic at Pomona Valley Hospital. Because he was still growing, the cartilage was in danger of healing with bone rather than cartilage.

“So you have to go in and straighten it out,” Bayley said. “And then it grows crooked again, and you have to go in again.”

Undaunted, Eimers started playing basketball soon after the accident. Last year, he went out for the freshman team at Santa Margarita.

“At tryouts, I noticed this kid, limping,” said Rich Schaaf, varsity coach at Santa Margarita. “It almost made me sick to look at his knees--you can just see he’s got to be in pain when he walks or runs.

“But Joe has this attitude of ‘whatever anybody else does, I’ll do,’ and he did everything (the coaches) asked of him.”

As a freshman, Eimers scored one point on a team that finished 19-6. “It was funny, the way he scored,” JV Coach John Lester said.

“It was the day before he went in for knee surgery. In the last few seconds of the game, another small boy, Danny Donovan, got fouled, then threw Joe the ball and ran down to the other end of the court.

“The ref didn’t know who got fouled, gave Joe the ball and he made his free throw.”

Eimers, who is 5-feet-6, continues to work out to strengthen his knees. And he remains upbeat.

“After a surgery or two ago,” he said, “I just knew it was going to be better.”

Last fall, he nearly became manager of the football team, but then decided he wanted to play sports, not just watch. And the only sport he wanted to play was basketball.

“I just went out for basketball because it looked like fun,” Eimers said. “I like to play golf, casually. I watch football on TV, but I like basketball. I have no desire to play any other sport.

“I play with friends around my neighborhood--I can beat everybody except my next-door neighbor, and I’m working on him.”

Eimers cannot straighten his right knee, so he has changed his running style, favoring his left foot, turning his right foot inward to compensate. And although it might look strange, it works well for Eimers.

“It hurts after I’ve been running constantly but otherwise it’s OK,” he said.

Eimers scored his first three points of the season last weekend against Valley Christian. “The kids just went crazy,” Schaaf said. “The whole crowd likes him.”

Schaaf said Eimers’ cheerful, never-say-die attitude has ensured his spot on the team.

“I’ll never forget, about this time last year--it was a Monday--his dad came in and said something had gone wrong, and Joe was going to have to have another operation,” Schaaf said. “Of course I figured that was the end of his high school basketball career. But about a month and a half later, I see Joe in the weight room, doing squats. And then he went out for the team again. I couldn’t believe it.”

Santa Margarita, in only its third year of existence, has five basketball teams: varsity, junior varsity, sophomore and two freshman teams. Instead of keeping Eimers on the sophomore team, Schaaf bumped him up to junior varsity this year.

“Joe’s real smart,” Schaaf said. “His handicap--although I’m sure he doesn’t consider it a handicap--forces him to be smart. Nobody can tell him he’s not considered a player like the other kids--we need good attitudes as well as good players.”

Eimers said he was surprised and pleased at the promotion, but all he really cares about is his team.

“I didn’t even know if I was going to be on the sophomore team, but just before the season, Coach told me I was going to be on JV. I was pretty stoked,” he said.

“I just hope the team wins.”