By Gary Kalahar (Photo: Ryan Kerwin, JTV Sports)
JTV Sports
When athletic director Mike Baisden wanted to launch a strength program last spring for Jackson Christian High School athletes, he knew who his initial recruit among the girls had to be.
“I told her, ‘If you come and you’re consistent, people are going to follow you,’ ” Baisden said. “ ‘You’re a leader, and you’re going to be a leader for your teams next year.’ ”
Baisden recognized the effect Bree Sanford could have on her fellow athletes – not only because of her personality, but because she already had demonstrated how much she was willing to endure to achieve her goals. Sanford has battled through two significant physical hardships to emerge as one of Jackson Christian’s top athletes in her junior year. Born with an extremely severe case of clubfoot, Sanford underwent years of surgeries and physical therapy to allow her to be active. Then, a serious knee injury kept her out of action her freshman year.
“For someone who could have used her ‘disability’ to live a life of, ‘I can’t, that is too hard,’ she has risen above,” said her mother, Janet Sanford, “and just keeps moving forward at a great pace.”
Moving is the key word. The surgeon who corrected Sanford’s club feet advised that pain or soreness would forever be an issue in her legs, ankles and feet, but that the more active she was, the less she was likely to be in pain. She began dance class at age 3 and hasn’t slowed down since. Sanford plays volleyball, basketball and soccer for the Royals. During soccer season last spring, she was also running track while playing travel basketball. Even she acknowledges now that was over the top, and she doesn’t plan to run track this year.
Clubfoot causes a baby’s feet to be turned out of position at birth. According to the Mayo Clinic, most cases can be treated with stretching and casting, and perhaps one surgery. Both of Sanford’s feet were turned inward and nearly upside down.
“It was like I had no ankles,” she said.
Most of her first 18 months were spent in leg casts that required weekly changing after stretching at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor.
“We prayed a lot,” her mother said.
Then the surgeries began, seven of them by the time she was in fifth grade. None of them slowing her down. She regularly won the prize for the most miles logged at recess in Jackson Christian’s mileage club, and she played every sport she could. Her first memory of the ordeal was a surgery in first grade.
“I remember it because when you’re little you think it’s cool to have a cast that everyone can sign,” she said. “But it was easy for me to recover from it, so I didn’t think much of it.”
As the second youngest, with her twin sister Audrey, of 10 children raised by their mother, Bree found it was difficult to get to the numerous physical therapy sessions required. She ended up doing much of it at home. Stretching of her legs continues to be part of her daily routine.
“A lot of things I had to do by myself,” she said. “I wanted to get better, so it pushed me to keep doing stuff.”
Sanford said “it always hurt, and my legs were sore at the end of the day,” but she knew that things would be worse if she sat home inactive.
Sanford started playing basketball, which has turned into her first love, in second grade.
“My mom worked at the school, so every morning we would get there an hour early so she could open up the building and turn everything on,” Sanford said. “There was a little gym, so me and my brother would go in there and shoot every day.”
Sanford credits Rick Blumenstock, who coached her in elementary school, with developing a passion for the game that she took into middle school.
“Biggest competitor ever,” said Brandon Stanton, who coached Sanford in middle school. “She will battle until the very end. It doesn’t matter if her knee or ankle is about to fall off. She doesn’t want a sub. She wants to be out there.”
Sanford was likely to be a contributor to the varsity team as a freshman, but there was another hurdle to overcome when she injured her knee during an eighth-grade game. She had noticed something not feeling right since the year before, and when it finally gave way by popping grotesquely out of place, it was discovered that she was missing a portion of her knee.
Doctors said it was not related to her clubfoot.
“It’s just a fluke, and had I never played sports, I probably would have never known about it,” she said.
Surgery to repair that was followed by another full year of intensive physical therapy and a missed freshman basketball season.
“I had so many ankle surgeries, I was thinking this is going to be so easy,” Sanford said. “But it was really hard. I have a real high pain tolerance, but that was hard. The doctor said six months recovery, but it took way longer than we thought.
“I was pretty scared,” she said about returning to the court last season as a sophomore. “The doctor said if you’re scared, you can’t play, because you’ll hurt yourself if you’re not full in. I was definitely holding back, not trying very hard. It probably took me half the season to think I was good.”
Sanford averaged 10.4 points a game last season, sharing team scoring honors with two seniors. An athletic shooting guard who has the ball in her hands much of the time and is a team captain, she has averaged 9.0 points, 3.0 assists and 7.5 rebounds in the Royals’ first two games. She made seven steals last Friday against Waldron.
“It has not slowed her down,” said Baisden, now in his first year as Jackson Christian’s coach. “You’re not going to get someone who works harder.
“She’s our scorer, but she’ll do anything that’s needed. She wants to learn. She wants you to tell her what she did wrong. She doesn’t like to lose, doesn’t like to make mistakes. Everybody feeds off that.”
Just like they did in the strength program, as Baisden predicted.
“She’s been there since day one,” he said. “And now we have 10-14 who will come. The new ones can’t believe the level she’s at with weights. I told them, she started where you’re at.”
A member of the National Honor Society, Sanford said she has had a career path picked out for some time. She has seen enough of physical therapy from one side. Now she wants to be on the other side, helping – and probably inspiring – others to bounce back.