Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/109500
Mark Selders Janice, back at the team hotel, he began to cry. ���Mom, I don���t know what to do,��� he said. ���My life is over. This is the only thing I know.��� Expecting sympathy, an acknowledgement of the devastation he was feeling, Frazier got just the opposite. ���What are you talking about?��� Janice replied. ���You have everything going for you right now. You have nothing to worry about.��� Determined to lift his spirits, Janice urged her son, a 22-year-old NBA hopeful, to find the positives, to get back up and keep going. If you have a Plan A and it takes a detour, move on to Plan B, she told him. She knew he would get the message. ���He���s more than just basketball,��� she said. ���He has a whole life ahead of him that is not just all about basketball. He���s a young man who is still developing, and there will be other obstacles and other challenges in his life. ���I felt really bad, but sometimes not everyone can be sad and show that emotion. Somebody has to be able to pull it together and reassure everyone that it can be fixed. He was very sad and down for those moments. But we talked, and I don���t know that it was what he wanted to hear, but after he heard it, he felt it in his heart that he could be better. He could be stronger. He could do more. He felt courage in his heart to move beyond that.��� Said Frazier, ���I think at that moment right there, it kind of snapped me out of it. It just seems silly. I���m sitting there talking about how my life is over with, and I���ve got everything going. I���m at a great institution. I���ve got great family, great friends, and my career is not over. God blessed me, and that gives me the chance to come back and play another year under Coach [Patrick] Chambers, another year with the team, another year of college, another education. It���s kind of like a blessing in disguise. ���Ever since then, the positive energy has really just been staying with me.��� It���s been four months since his injury, and Frazier is walking normally with the aid of a specialized arch in his sneaker. He���s finished with the pool therapy, motorized scooter, crutches and walking boot. There is still more rehabilitation to do, but focusing on goals in two-week increments, Frazier is speeding toward a recovery that will allow him to play and practice through the summer and into an all-but-assured fifth year at Penn State. His life is not, in fact, over. That���s not to say Frazier���s life has been easy since the injury. Maintaining a positive attitude has been a challenge for everyone associated with the program this year, but especially for Frazier, who can only watch as his teammates struggle. Without their All-Conference point guard ��� who accounted for 58 percent of the team���s scoring last season ��� the Lions were averaging a leaguelow 54.8 points a game through midFebruary. That helpless feeling is the worst part of his ordeal, Frazier said. ���I can scream, I can cheer on guys, but it���s just not the same as being out there and being that leader on the court.��� Chambers has tried to keep Frazier heavily involved in the team���s day-today activities. The coaching staff has him studying film, attending practices and games, and maintaining a crucial leadership role in the locker room. It���s a role Frazier began to embrace the night of his injury. As he and Chambers sat alone at a Starbucks near the team hotel, they focused on the importance of resilience in a person���s life. ���You talk about the problem first. You talk about the state of mind. You talk about where he���s at in that very moment. I don���t want to discount that. That���s a grieving time for a young man who has big dreams,��� Chambers said. ���But once we get done talking about that, now it���s time to talk about the positives. The positives are going to be another year of me getting to coach you, another year of you getting stronger and bigger and working on things that you can work on. You can be a better basketball player, a better human being.��� Frazier said he already sees that transformation happening. ���I feel like this is going to make me a better person, a better man,��� he said. ���To be able to go through this type of struggle and this type of injury and be able to fight ��� I think it���s going to help me in the long run as basketball goes and as far as what I do after basketball as a man, a husband and a father. I think everything happens for a reason, and it���s a blessing in disguise.���