Rebound.
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU SPORTS EDITOR
Sunday, May 27, 2007

After three knee surgeries and the loss of her mother, Lauren Kamiyama has emerged from her personal darkness to help lead Chapman into the NCAA Tournament.


Photos by MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS/Rafu Shimpo
Lauren Kamiyama has stayed focused through family tragedy and near career-ending surgery. On Wednesday, her Chapman team opens up the NCAA tournament at home against La Verne.

As a junior at Cerritos High School, Kamiyama was enjoying life. She played on three Varsity teams–two in the same season–and was at or near the top of the honor roll every semester.

“They had some doubts about her initially,” her father recalled. “The principal and the athletic director were concerned about her welfare and her education, but she made believers of them. She had a 3.9 the first semester and second semester she pulled a 4.0.”

Playing both basketball and soccer in the winter and softball in the spring, Kamiyama often found herself in two games on the same day.
“Sometimes we’d pick her up from soccer and she’d change in the car on the way to the basketball game,” Ed said.

She wasn’t just filling a jersey on those teams, either. Lauren made the All-Suburban League basketball team as a freshman, as well as second team honors in soccer and softball.

Then, out of left field, came the bad news.

Lauren’s mother, Sue Kamiyama, took a turn for the worse in her battle with a progressive colon cancer. She was forced to leave her work as Athletic Director at Bell High School and was in and out of the hospital.

Lauren immersed herself in her sports to keep herself from despair. Her mother’s condition fluctuated and there was hope she would recover soon.

“That really hurt her. Her mom was there when she graduated from Cerritos, but she wanted her mom to be here to experience all this,” Ed said at Chapman on Saturday. “It’s been really tough for her, to handle that and playing, too. I know that she’s really playing for herself and her mom would be proud of her.”
Things were going pretty well into 2003, her senior year at Cerritos, when a seemingly routine injury began what would eventually become a threat to any athletic career she hope to pursue.

“At the beginning of December, I landed wrong, just running straight. I didn’t really think anything was wrong,” Lauren said. What she had done, unbeknownst to herself, is tear the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee.

“It never crossed my mind that I could tear my ACL. I waited a couple of days and it felt okay, so I continued to play on it with just a sleeve. At the end of December, a teammate kind of sat on my leg and that’s when I realized something was wrong.”

More than wrong, it was a disaster. Lauren had torn the ACLs in both knees. She immediately left her sports teams.

“At that age, it never crosses your mind that you could tear your ACL or have a serious injury like that. I don’t think many kids at that age really know the feeling of that kind of injury,” she said.

“Initially, they told me I was done for the year, but then they said there might be a slight chance I could play in the playoffs in late February. I did play at Senior Night for about a minute, but until then, I was basically in rehab.”

Lauren’s mother was there to see her last high school game. It was the last time she saw her daughter play.

In the fall of 2004, Lauren was set to begin her studies at Chapman, as her mother’s health declined.

“Moving in was difficult. When my two older brothers went to college, we made a family event of their moving in. We all went there to help them get settled. I had never imagined my mom wasn’t going to be there when I moved in. I tried to stay positive and think that she’d come to visit me when she eventually got better.

“Once school started and she wasn’t well, I began to think that maybe after basketball season started, I could bring her over after a game and I was looking forward to that.”

In addition to the nervousness that any freshman would have during the first year of college, Lauren had to shoulder the burden of knowing she could lose her mother any day. She had told the Chapman women’s head coach, Carol Jue, about the situation and that she may not be able to play that season. That admission made it all the more surprising to see Lauren on campus on Oct. 27, 2004, the day after her mother had passed away.
Lauren told Coach Jue she would miss practice, but she she made it school to take a math test the following day. Her older brother, Darin, waited in the car and napped while she took the exam.

“‘You really shouldn’t be at school right now,’ they said but I had to get back to normal,” she said.

Her father said from that point, she turned to basketball as a savior. She was all of 18 years old.

“I couldn’t keep myself from thinking, ‘Why, at such a young age, did it have to be my mom? She was out there to help other people, so why did it have to be her?’”

On the court, Lauren still had to deal with the lingering effects of her earlier surgery. As the season began, she was forced to sit out and be an observer.

“I wasn’t cleared to play until mid-December, so I just watched how things worked,” she explained. “As a freshman, you need to learn about transitions and things like that. Coach said she’d understand if I didn’t come back, but I really needed to. My dad was pushing us all to return to normal life as much as we could.”

Once given the green light to play, Kamiyama was forced to wear knee braces. They were cumbersome and unnatural and took some adjustment on her part.

“It was kind of like learning to run again. I was playing with two braces. They have hinges that click in the middle and sometimes get caught. It reminded me somewhat of Forrest Gump.”

But she played well as a freshman and performed well in the classroom. She wasn’t happy, felt restricted, but felt she had no choice but to get back on the court and hit the books. It was almost as if basketball was the one thing that would get her through her family’s tragedy.

Then, more knee trouble. Her legs needed more treatment, more rest. 15 months of inactivity followed. In a period of several months, she had lost her mother and her ability to play the sport she had given most of her years to.
“I think the hardest year was last year. I wasn’t able to do much. I didn’t want to play with braces on my legs and so I had to sit out a whole year, so last year was by far the hardest year for me. Basketball was the outlet for everything else and then that was gone, too.”

Wallowing in depression, however, was never an option. The recovery time led Kamiyama to adopt one of her mother’s great loves.

“Not being able to play was really hard, but that’s when I took up coaching, so it was kind of fun to be able to coach for the first time. That helped a little,” she said.

As the knees healed, the outlook brightened for Kamiyama. She came back strong this season, leading Chapman in assists and steals, was second in three-pointers and third in points per game. She’s been banged up–the price paid by any athlete at the college level–with two concussions, a broken rib, a night spent in the hospital with dehydration, and a twice-strained ACL.
I feel 95 percent back. Having three knee surgeries, I don’t think I’ll ever be 100 percent,” she said. “On cold days, they tend to hurt, but it’s good to be back as much as I am.”

With her GPA now around 3.8, Kamiyama will finish her bachelor’s degree next spring in Liberal Studies with an emphasis on physical education and a minor in psychology. With two year of eligibility left to play basketball, she will continue graduate work to finish her teaching credential.

As Chapman heads into the NCAA tournament, Ed Kamiyama credits Coach Jue with helping Lauren to stay focused and grounded.

“Coach Carol has done everything for Lauren here. She’s been like a mother and an older sister to her and I really appreciate that,” he said. “She said she wanted to rest her legs and see if she could continue to play now. She waited a long time for this moment.”

For Lauren, things are looking up, but she doesn’t get too far ahead of herself.

“This year isn’t as bad as last year, psychologically. Things aren’t so bad but there are days,” she admitted.

When Chapman takes on La Verne Wednesday, Kamiyama will be pitted against an old friend, La Verne guard Lindsey Shiomi. She said wouldn’t make any predictions about the game, just a promise that her team would play their best.

“I always go into games thinking we’ll come out on top. We’ve had a great season. I’d love for it to keep going and I love playing with my teammates here, so I can guarantee we’re going to give it our all.”

As for her father’s anxiety about her aggressiveness on the court, Kamiyama said there’s simply no alternative.

“I do things on instinct. Sometimes I don’t even really know what the score is, that’s just the way I know how to play.”