Kerns Part Of WSU Cast Point Guard Has Spent More Than Her Share Of Time Injured

Jen Kerns had had enough with the contraption plastered onto her left arm.

She hated the way dirt clung to every crevice of her cast. And the smell was another story altogether.

“I’d get it changed every month, it smelled so bad,” Kerns said. “And I had every color cast imaginable. Someone made a request for purple. So I came back with a purple one.”

By no coincidence, the request was made by a former Washington State women’s basketball coach who played college ball at Washington. She asked Kerns during her second season on the Washington State team. That was two years, two casts and two surgeries ago.

It’s been that kind of career for Kerns, a point guard who came out of Lake City High School in 1995 with three A-1 state titles (two at Coeur d’Alene High), loads of desire and an equal amount of promise.

She said she decided on Washington State over second-choice Portland because she wanted to play in the Pacific-10 Conference.

Idaho was not an option.

“The University of Idaho, to me, is High School High. Here, there were three people from my high school. One was my brother,” said Kerns, who has four brothers and four sisters.

“The other was like the valedictorian of my high school. So it wasn’t like we all talked all the time.”

Kerns has no complaint about her decision. And she’s had her chances early on. During her freshman year, the 5-foot-8 guard saw limited playing time in all 29 games, backing up Jade Hyett.

Her role remained similar her sophomore season. But that’s when the visits to the doctor’s office outnumbered the trips to the free-throw line. It was the fifth game, an exhibition against the Portland Saints, when Kerns broke her left wrist for the first time.

Until then, she’d never broken anything. Since then, she’s broken the same wrist three times, undergone surgery three times and switched doctors twice.

“I figured it out once,” said Kerns, now a redshirt junior. “I think I’ve been in a cast a total of 14 months.

“One time they put a bone-grow stimulator on. It’s supposed to work. I don’t know if it ever did.”

But the little red light designed to go off every time the bone was shocked, worked fine.

“I had so many weird comments,” Kerns recalled. “They’d say `What is that, a conspiracy?’ Or, `What? Did you just get out of juvee? Are they tracking you?’ “It just got old.”

So did keeping the bulky thing dry.

“I cut a hole out of my shower curtain, put my arm through it and rested it.”

But there were many more inconveniences in store. After her second cast was removed last fall, Kerns was primed for her redshirt sophomore season. Hyett had returned to play in her homeland of Australia and the starting point guard spot was open.

The Cougars were playing Mississippi State in the consolation final at a Christmas tournament in Hilo, Hawaii. Kerns fell hard.

“I thought I rebroke my hand. It swelled up really big,” she said.

Her Pullman doctor disagreed. So she played the entire Pac-10 season heavily taped with limited range and maximum pain. Her role was the back-up point guard to Katie Nyseth, then a freshman.

“I played all Pac-10 games with one hand,” said Kerns, who averaged 1.8 points per game on 37.0 percent shooting (57 of 154) in 22.9 minutes.

The point guard roles haven’t changed much this season as the Cougars (7-3) prepare for their conference opener Monday at Washington (4-5).

But Kerns, healthy for the first time in nearly two years, is playing basketball with both hands.

She underwent her third surgery at the end of last season after her family doctor diagnosed her wrist was indeed broken, again. The cast has been removed for weeks, although a faint tan line remains.

Nyseth, at 5-3 the third-smallest player in the conference, is starting and logging 28.2 minutes per game. She’s averaging 4.8 points on 46.4 percent shooting. She’s accounted for 30 assists and turned over the ball 28 times.

Kerns is getting 20.1 minutes and averaging 7.3 points. Her assist-to-turnover ratio is an unacceptable 23 to 24. Her 37.5 shooting percentage is below the team’s 41.5 average.

“Jen gives us a different dimension,” WSU coach Harold Rhodes said. Nyseth is more interested in getting the ball to the scorers. Kern has more of a scorer’s mentality.

“It makes us better. We can go out and establish what we want defensively and as we start rotating kids through - to bring a player like that in with that kind of experience and that type of offensive potential - you don’t lose anything.”

And this way, neither player is cast off to the side.