The trials and tribulations of Shelby Schweyen

Shelby Schweyen cried the day the doctor shook his head and delivered the devastating news. Her ACL was shot. It wasn't torn, but it was loose, too unstable to play on. She would need surgery.

She would need to suspend her hopes, her dreams, and dedicate nine months to a year to coming back, to returning to the player she once was, to getting back on track to becoming the player everyone knew she could be.

Except this wasn't January 2017, when the arc of a promising athlete's career -- first for Sentinel High, then for the Lady Griz -- was forever altered the night she sunk to the floor against Columbia Falls.

It wasn't the conversation that led to two more surgeries on the same knee, setbacks that forced her to miss more of her three-sport, high-school career than she was able to enjoy complication-free.

This was in late October, less than two months ago, not long after scoring four points in nine minutes in Montana's exhibition victory over Lewis-Clark State.

She was supposed to be past all this, wasn't she, her dues paid in full? And then some? Playing alongside her older sister, both competing as Lady Griz for their mom, was supposed to be the reward, the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then that light was snuffed out, or at least repositioned far, far away, far away as it's ever been. It's heartbreaking: Shelby Schweyen has been shelved. Again.

Shannon Schweyen is asked if the family feels beaten down by this point, after one ACL surgery for her daughter led to two more surgeries to make things right. Now another ACL surgery has been scheduled.

Another year of rehab, of sitting on the sideline and watching, lies ahead. "That's a good word for it," she says.

Jordyn Schweyen cried the night her sister had her initial injury, in a home win over Columbia Falls on a Friday night in Missoula, on the Spartans' home court. There was no doubting what had happened.

Sentinel had a game the next morning as well. The tears continued, as big sister sat alone in a stairwell and considered a near future without her sister as a healthy, vibrant, valuable teammate.

"Sports have always meant everything to her. Seeing her not be able to what she loves takes a toll on the whole family, knowing she wants every second to be out there," Jordyn says.

The blows would keep coming, to both her and, by intimate association, her family.

The tweak of her knee as a senior on the volleyball court. Missing the rest of her final year, including basketball and track and field. Two follow-up surgeries.

Even though there was never an answer as to why this was happening, there was always hope. Hope that the worst was behind her. Hope that the next chapter of her life was just starting.

She was able to begin doing drills with the Lady Griz over the summer, on a limited basis as her knee, leg and body adapted to the grind of practice once again.

She tried to convince herself that the post-workout aches and pains would lessen over time, that it was just her body getting stronger, as years of semi-inactivity melted away.

She talked herself into the idea that maybe she would just have to deal with the nagging soreness, the price of being a dinged-up athlete. She wouldn't be the first.

Finally there was the night, not long after the Lewis-Clark State game in late October, when she retreated to the security of her parents' home, fell on the couch and revealed that her knee felt like it had long ago, when it was first injured.

She wasn't on the mend or the comeback trail at all. She was back at Point A, still full of potential but all broken up inside, a Mother Goose poem brought to life ... all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Shelby together again.

Two and a half years of ups and downs, mostly downs, had led to this: Shelby Schweyen was no closer to playing basketball than she had been that night back in January 2017, when this all started.

If anything, she was even farther away. The series of fixes and setbacks seemed to have no end. And nobody had an answer.

It was a dark night when her mom took a walk around the neighborhood, trying to process it all, trying to make it bearable, trying to make sense of it.

She knows mothers who have lost a child in a car accident. She knows mothers who have children who are battling cancer. This was nothing like that, but it was under her roof, a part of her life.

She tried to convince herself as she kept walking that in the grand scheme of things, her daughter's troubles were basically minor, that she still had her health, still had a bright future.

Those positive thoughts would prove to be fleeting. It made sense, the self-talk, but the mind has a way of remaining connected to the heart, and hers was full of ache.

The worst-case scenario was realized just days later, when that doctor told them the news. The ACL had failed. That's why Shelby was in so much pain.

Only surgery, her fourth, would make it right, and even then, there was no guarantee, not when something's been worked on four times. The body isn't built that way, not even an elite athlete's.

"I can't describe the feeling. It's one of the deepest pains you can have as a parent. You want your kids to have an opportunity and a chance, and it keeps getting taken away," says Schweyen.

"You feel like somehow you failed them. You want to be able to fix it for them, and when you can't get them healthy, that's a frustrating feeling as a parent."

Over the last nearly three years, it's led to a state of growing apathy, for all of them. The emotions of the first injury just aren't there anymore. They can't be. It's the body's defense mechanism, to make it easier to cope.

The care is still there, the frustrations are still present. But the rawness, the anger, all of it has been smoothed over by the repeated nature of the injuries, of the bad news. A person just gets worn down.

"It's almost like shock. You've got to be kidding. Again? You've used up so much emotion that it's like you don't have the energy to show it anymore," said Jordyn. "It's almost like you're not surprised."

Shelby cried the day she was told to start preparing herself, mentally, for surgery, for the lengthy rehab to come. "Since then I've cried maybe one day," she says.

"I think I have become a little numb to it. I don't think the bad news affects me quite the same. Still, you either roll over and give up or you get up and try to make it better."

For as uncomfortable as it sounds, there is a this-is-probably-it feel to her next surgery, which could take place as soon as two weeks from now. Who knows what they'll find inside that knee, under the skin? And if they can make it right again.

"We've had some people in the medical field kind of say, this is your last shot. You want to make sure you get the best and get it done right," says Brian.

Dr. James Andrews might be the most well-known surgeon in the world of sports. He helped make Tommy John surgery mainstream, and the guy has worked on some of the Mount Rushmore faces of the last few decades, Bo Jackson, Michael Jordan and Jack Nicklaus among them.

When a high-profile athlete has returned from certain types of injuries over the years, how often has his name been brought up, his name spoken like he's a deity, untouchable by us common folk? Dr. James Andrews. An almost mythic figure.

Yeah, Shannon Schweyen got off the phone with him not long ago. They've talked a few times now.

He's a man of the Southeast -- he was a conference champion in the pole vault for LSU and has built his reputation working out of Alabama and the Gulf Coast -- but he has a Montana connection.

He was the team doctor for Troy State when that school's football team traveled to Missoula in 1996 for an NCAA I-AA national semifinal game.

He was late getting on the team plane, so he missed his meal. Work kept him from joining the team dinner the night before the game, so he went to bed hungry.

On game day, which would end with a 70-7 Montana victory, he tried to get a hot dog at one of the Washington-Grizzly Stadium concession stands, but it was late in the game and they had shut down.

And the plane that was supposed to bring Troy back to Alabama after the game? It had mechanical issues. The one that was brought in as a replacement didn't have time to stock up on food.

"He said he didn't eat for two days on that trip. I told him, 'You fix my girl up right and I'll treat you to a Montana steak dinner and a trip to Glacier Park. You won't go hungry this time,' " Shannon said.

If all goes according to plan, Brian and Shelby will be in Pensacola in less than two weeks. For as unlikely as it sounds, it won't even be the first Lady Griz Dr. Andrews has worked on the last two years.

Sophia Stiles? He operated on her too. No, it wasn't another doctor who did the surgery, only to have Dr. Andrews come in and put his stamp of approval on the work that was done.

He's the one who held the scalpel, who cut into Stiles' knee, fixed it, closed it up and declared her ready to mend, ready to rehab, ready to become whole again. Ready to become who she was before.

On Saturday in Fullerton, Calif., Stiles had 13 points, eight rebounds, four assists and three steals, and looked like one of the best players on the court. And Shelby was watching from the sideline.

"I was really excited when Shannon said they were going there," says Stiles, who plays with a brace but intends to ditch it as soon as the season is over. She's over it, physically and mentally.

But Dr. James Andrews? Really? The well-known surgeon taking time from his schedule to work on a player from Montana? How does that happen?

Not long after Stiles tumbled to the court with her own ACL injury, against North Dakota in February 2018, her family started looking into options.

Like so many of us, her brother had heard of Dr. James Andrews, knew he was the trusted orthopedic surgeon for million-dollar athletes, so why not his sister?

Umm, because when you need absolution, you don't go to the Pope. You keep it local and call it good and trust that it's pretty much the same thing.

It's true: gods do not answer letters. But they do take phone calls. "My mom called and I got in," says Stiles. And now she's ballin'.

Of course there is a risk in going to the very top. This is far from a Hail Mary, but what if this doesn't work? When you go with the best, there is no longer a Plan B. There is nowhere else to go but down.

Yep, the Schweyens are all in. At this point, it's their final move. "I don't want to look back and think we could have done something different," says Shannon.

"I don't want to say this is our last chance to get it right, but it certainly is very important to have the best possible surgery we could have."

Fun fact: Shelby Schweyen grew up a cheater. A rampant cheater. She wasn't brought up that way, of course. It's just that she had to win, no matter what, no matter the game. Even when it wasn't a game.

"After grace, seeing who could take the first bite of food," she says, giving a glimpse into the psyche of early versions of herself.

Unlike her older sister, who is a "flat-liner" according to her dad, who uses the term with reverence, having had his best success as a track and field coach with teams full of them, Shelby's competitive fires just burn a little hotter.

"One time I did hide a card up my sleeve to win. Maybe twice," she says. Adds her dad: "She would cheat at every single game we played so she could win. She hated to lose that much. You'd point it out to her and she'd want to argue about cheating."

She outgrew that, and now the fierce competitor has to go against her nature when she gives herself over to the hands of another. She will be powerless to make things right, to will it just so.

She'll provide the critical part of the operation, her still-lying body, but she'll be nothing more than an anesthesia-ed spectator.

That goes for the entire family, some of whom will be there, with others back home, praying this time it works and that Shelby Schweyen is on her way back, if not to full health at least something close to it.

"It's just a set of unfortunate circumstances that have brought us to where we are today that to a degree have been uncontrollable," says Brian.

"Hopefully when we come back from this one, that's it and we move forward. And eight months from now she'll be 100 percent and be able to do every single thing she can do. That's the hope."

With a knee that's been worked on three times, with maybe only an opportunity for one more, hope is all that's left.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Jordyn Schweyen

Shelby Schweyen

Sophia Stiles

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