Despite two knee injuries, Ariel Marsh stays in the game

Ariel Marsh didn’t cry when the ligament in her left knee tore.

She was used to physical pain. In training, the Chino Ayala High basketball player would often run in sand dunes until she could no longer feel her legs, then workout some more before running another two miles over the sand.

But she sobbed when the tear was diagnosed -- it meant she’d be away from basketball for six to nine months.

“Everything I’d done and everything I’d worked for had been taken away from me,” said Marsh, who dreamed of earning a college scholarship. “I felt my world falling down.”

The injury took place almost three years ago, during the spring of her freshman year at Ayala, and she was determined to be completely healed in time for the next high school season. So instead of doing range-of-motion exercises three times a day, Marsh performed them seemingly every waking moment. She also attended all of her team’s practices -- not as an idle viewer, but to shoot hundreds of free throws and do stationary rhythm dribbling drills.

“Most people would have just sat on the sidelines,” said her coach, Mel Sims. “She always did what she didn’t have to do.”

After five months, she was running and jumping. After six, she was playing full-contact basketball.

As a junior, Marsh averaged 20 points, and scored 42 in the league championship game. And she was receiving some letters of interest from colleges.

It looked like her dream of playing in college might come true after all.

But then last summer she was injured again when she landed awkwardly after being hit in the air while going for a rebound.

“When I went down on the ground, I said, ‘I’ll do anything, just please don’t let this be another ACL tear,’ ” Marsh recalled.

It was -- this time in her right knee.

It hardly seemed possible, but the injury seemed worse the second time because she knew how much pain she would experience after the surgery and how much work it would take to get herself back into playing shape. Beyond that, she also knew she was damaged goods in the minds of college coaches.

The day after her injury, she went to Ayala’s practice in street clothes and addressed her teammates. “I want you guys to play every day like it’s your last game and really treasure every moment on the court because you never know when it’s going to be taken away from you,” Marsh said as she choked back tears.

Some people predicted she would never recover. Others advised her to quit playing basketball.

When she did her exercises, she thought of those people.

“I wanted to prove to myself I could do it,” Marsh said. “I wanted to prove everyone wrong.”

And she has. Six months after her second serious knee injury, Marsh walked onto the court just like she said she would.

Not only that, she was voted to the all-tournament team for her play during her first games back.

“I had the best time of my life playing,” Marsh said. “There’s nothing like the feeling of being in the game.”

Her coach couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Two ACL tears, that’s psychologically devastating,” Sims said. “Most athletes would become very morbid.”

Not Marsh.

“It’s like you’re down 20 points in a game and you have to battle back,” she said of her recovery.

“Maybe in the past I’d think it’s over. But at this point in my life, I don’t think anything is over.”

melissa.rohlin@latimes.com