Avant is better off for having a hoops break

Lauren Avant has waited a long time for this week.

Nearly three years have passed since the 5-foot-9 point guard from Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis called Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt on Thanksgiving and committed to the Lady Vols.

Avant will follow through on that pledge during the fall signing period, which begins today. Guard Meighan Simmons from Steele High in Cibolo, Texas, also will sign with UT and is expected to do so on Thursday.

Because of school obligations, Avant might not sign until either Thursday or Tuesday. After all these years, what's a more few days.

"I'm a committed person,'' Avant said. "When I make decisions, I like to stick to them."

In the past six months, Avant has embraced another guiding principle: "I think everything happens for a reason."

For her, the thought is based on pain and misfortune rather than patience. Last March, Avant was involved in a major car accident. Another car plowed into the Ford Explorer Avant was driving while making a turn near her school, resulting in physical and emotional damage.

"For awhile I was traumatized,'' she said. "I'm over it now."

The physical toll was a shoulder dislocation that required surgery. She visits her doctor at the end of November to determine her immediate playing prospects for the upcoming season.

Avant has been named the state's Division II-A Miss Basketball the past two seasons. She averaged 15.2 points, 5.7 rebounds, five steals and four assists per game last season in helping the Lady Lynx to a 30-4 record and the state championship game, where they lost to Bishop Byrne, 42-39.

Avant said that she has shared and compared shoulder sagas with Summitt, who suffered her injury in March of 2008 in knocking a raccoon off her back deck that was poised to attack her yellow Lab, Sally. Avant, meanwhile, was bracing her sister for impact against the passenger door.

Avant's story also is reminiscent of another former Lady Vol point guard. Sa'de Wiley-Gatewood committed as a 10th grader. She arrived at UT suffering from knee tendinitis after a rigorous playing schedule during her high school years. She never was completely healthy before transferring during her sophomore season.

Avant was on the same path, suffering a multitude of injuries - everything from a broken right foot (twice) to thumb injuries and knee tendinitis - during a her seemingly endless hoops season.

"During the summer, you might play 60 games," she said. "You're not eating right . . . "

And, in her case, she always was trying to play through the pain.

"My problem has been I wouldn't give things time to heal,'' Avant said.

Not even her shoulder injury. She actually tried to play a game in April at the Boo Williams Invitational in Hampton, Va.

"I think I played only a couple of minutes,'' she said. "But they were excruciating minutes."

The shoulder surgery steered her in a different direction. She took the summer off and feels rejuvenated.

"You kind of get lost in it,'' Avant said of her playing schedule. "You lose your childhood.

"Maybe (the accident) was God's way of telling me I needed a break, I need to slow down."

These days she's feeling good enough to joke about her shoulder.

"I like to think of it as my bionic shoulder,'' she said. "I shouldn't have any problem."

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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