Back from a break
There are bad breaks, and then there’s just plain bad timing.
In Emerson Fulton’s case, the first full day of basketball turnout for the 2006-07 season at East Valley High was both.
The bad break was the fourth metacarpal of his shooting hand – an injury that sidelined the sharp-shooting guard for six weeks. The bad timing?
“I couldn’t believe this happened my senior season,” Fulton said. “I was so looking forward to finally getting on the court in a varsity basketball game and this happened.
“It was the first full practice after we settled on our team. The last 10 minutes of practice. I didn’t hear anything pop or anything, but after a few minutes I felt this intense, throbbing pain. I guess I’m lucky. If it had been the fifth metacarpal, the next bone over, I would have needed surgery and missed the entire season.”
Fulton served his time, waiting patiently for his time in the Knights’ starting lineup.
“I was basically Dylan Sattin’s understudy last year,” Fulton said, referring to the three-year starting guard. “I guarded him every day in practice and I learned a lot from watching him. He had such incredible mental toughness.”
So instead of stepping into a starting role, Fulton sat on the sideline, studying each Greater Spokane League team East Valley played.
“I knew we were going to have to play each one of those teams again, so I watched,” he said. “I watched how they all guarded our outside shooters so I would know what to look for when I finally got my chance to play them.”
The way to get into the starting lineup wasn’t easy.
“Oh man, it was so hard to just watch,” he said. “It was especially hard during warm-ups. Once the game started, I could start to concentrate on what they were doing, but watching my teammates warm-up made me want to be out there that much more.”
With his hand in a cast for five weeks, Fulton ran to keep himself in shape and worked on developing his left-hand ball skills.
“It didn’t help all that much,” he laughed.
After the cast came off, Fulton was ordered to wait at least a week before attempting to shoot a basketball.
“By that first Sunday, I was practicing shooting a volleyball,” he said. “And a couple days after that I was shooting 200 or 300 shots a day and I’ve been going full-speed ever since.”
To make matters worse, the Knights were without six more players on suspension for breaking team rules – particularly painful because the players represented all of the team’s height.
“That was tough,” Fulton said. “I had people come up to me during the day and ask me why I had to break my hand now – why couldn’t I take better care of myself.”
Fulton finally returned to the lineup Dec. 29 against University and poured in 25 points, hitting four three-point field goals, in East Valley’s 71-58 loss to the Titans. He followed that up four nights later by burying 24 points to spark a 59-55 win over Mt. Spokane.
Mead, however, was able to take Fulton out of the offense and got the senior in to foul trouble.
“Mead has some really big guards and they gave us a lot of trouble,” he said.
For the first time this season, the Knights were set to play at full strength Tuesday against Gonzaga Prep.”We’re still in pretty good shape,” Fulton said of his team’s 3-9 record going into Tuesday’s game. “Looking at the standings, I think if we win out against North Central and Mt. Spokane, the other Class 3A teams, we can still be the No. 1 seed in the playoffs.
“No matter how you look at it, we have to start winning games and I think we can. I think we strengthened our bench while everyone has been out and I think we’ll be that much stronger now that we’re back at full strength.”
East Valley faces Lewis and Clark this Friday, a team the Knights knocked off by six points, 55-49, the first time around, and meets Rogers in a spirit game next Friday.
“That will be cool,” Fulton said. “We’re going to have a gym full of people for that game and we’re going to have everyone there. It would be pretty sad to play a game like that short-handed.”