Northwestern guard Lauryn Satterwhite won’t let knee tear her down: ‘She’s resilient’

One day after a two-point victory at Minnesota last month, Northwestern’s reserves and practice squad ran drills up and down the court, while the starters sat off to the side. Guard Lauryn Satterwhite was one of the 10 players who didn’t get the day off.

Still, she smiled, even after the extra conditioning she had to endure because her group came out on the losing end of a drill.

“I appreciate practice a lot more,” said Satterwhite, who has been riddled by injuries the last four-plus years. “Everybody complains about it, and it’s like, ‘We’ve gotta practice today? We’ve gotta run sprints?’ But I’m kind of thankful for it.”

Like many, Satterwhite entered college expecting to be a starter. But now she’s just happy to get an opportunity to play. And her positivity inspires her teammates.

“She’s our spark plug,” junior guard Jordan Hamilton said. “She’s also just a person that brings that smile into the room, and also her tenacity [is unmatched].”

“She’s just part of the fabric,” coach Joe McKeown said. “Everybody migrates to her personality, and she’s just such a great influence, even on the bench. She has this energy that you can’t teach, and she brings that every single day.”

That’s part of the reason McKeown recruited her out of Avondale, Arizona, in the first place.

As a freshman, Satterwhite established herself as one of the top high school guards in the country, leading Valley Vista High School to the 2014 state championship. She followed her breakout season by helping her team return to the state semifinals the next season.

Satterwhite was at the top of her game. Her handles and speed were elite. And her mind worked like a chess grandmaster, always a few steps ahead of her competition.

She received Division I offers from several schools, the biggest ones being Stanford and Northwestern.

Everything seemed to be falling into place for Satterwhite. Then, it all changed in an instant.

Satterwhite tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee after her sophomore season. In the next four years, Satterwhite tore that same ACL two more times. Most recently, she injured it in practice in the fall of 2018.

“It was kind of heartbreaking because I’ve torn it before and I knew how hard I worked to get back and there wasn’t anything I could do about it,” Satterwhite said of her most recent injury. “My ACL disintegrated, so it just rejected. There was nothing I could’ve done about it, nothing I could’ve done differently. It was bound to happen at that point, [and] it happened that day.”

Satterwhite couldn’t stand to miss another season. In her second year at Northwestern, she still hadn’t made her college debut. So she tried to play without an ACL at the start of the 2018-19 season.

“I wanted the college experience,” Satterwhite said. “I never got a taste of college basketball, and so I played without an ACL. And I was able to get my first bucket and do all that stuff.”

That had to hurt, right?

Not exactly.

The ACL holds the knee together and helps a person decelerate and pivot. Because her ligament was completely torn, Satterwhite explained, it didn’t hurt. She worked with her trainer to strengthen her quad muscles so they could act in place of the ligament. She also changed her mindset.

“I had to be fearless,” Satterwhite said. “I couldn’t play like I had a torn ACL or else I would hurt myself. And so I would say that was the most confident I’ve ever played.

“I’m so happy I did it because it brought out a different side of me. And I know what I can accomplish without an ACL, so I was like, ‘Imagine what I could accomplish with an ACL.’ ”

Satterwhite played four games before she decided to have surgery.

“She’s resilient,” McKeown said. “More so than any other player I’ve ever coached.”

Unable to play, Satterwhite found other ways to help Northwestern.

“She has that point-guard mindset,” Hamilton said. “So she was our personal player-coach. She was just kind of that extra pair of eyes.”

Satterwhite, a redshirt sophomore, has been cleared to play this season. She has appeared in 16 of Northwestern’s 22 games.

Though it was difficult at first for her to accept her role as a reserve, it beats sitting on the bench in street clothes.

“You have to accept the roles you’re given, and you’ve gotta wait for your opportunity,” Satterwhite said. “At first, [I was] kind of like, ‘Dang, like, this has happened and that has happened.’

“But I look at it as a blessing, too. It only makes me work harder to shoot for what I want and where I want to go, and it also just pushes me to be better. And I’ll always be ready when my opportunity comes.”