HUNTINGTON — For most of her high school career, Huntington High girls basketball standout Whitney Bays has penciled the same event for the first weekend of May.

Each year Bays made the trip to the West Virginia Sports Writers Association’s Victory Awards Dinner to receive hardware for being either a Class AAA all-state first team selection or the Rat Thom Award recipient as the state player of the year.

This year is different, though.

Bays, who missed her senior season with the Highlanders because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament, is busy rehabbing her knee in Huntington in preparation for a possible tryout for the USA National Team and her freshman year at the University of Maryland.

The Victory Awards Dinner is Sunday afternoon in Morgantown.

“I missed everything this year — my team, coaches, the awards banquets — all of it,” Bays said. “But having the chance to get back to health and try out for Team USA, that’s my award for the year.”

Bays signed to play at the University of Maryland, and said Terrapins’ head coach Brenda Frese gave the OK for her to seize the opportunity of the national team tryout, which occurs in Colorado in June.

Still, Bays is not committing until she knows her knee and her mind will be ready for such a task.

“I sent my papers in and talked to the coaches, so it is basically how I feel at the end of May or in June,” Bays said. “They said I could come to the tryout or if I feel rehab is best for me, then I can stay here.

“I really want to go, but I have to be comfortable mentally for me to go. I don’t want to pass up the opportunity but I have to do what’s best for me.”

Bays celebrated quite a milestone on Thursday.

She played in her first full-court game since tearing the ACL in an AAU tournament last July. Always her own toughest critic, Bays said she was trying to focus on the positives.

“Let’s just say I didn’t play like (Michael) Jordan. Now that I can physically do it, I have to tackle the mental side of it,” she said. “When you are running and you don’t feel as quick as you used to be, it’s really hard. I have to go out and forget about that it ever happened now. That’s the hard part.”

Bays made no secret that the last 10 months have been excruciating — from the pain of rehab to the pain of watching everyone else on the court playing.

Now, she plans to live on the court and get ready for whatever her immediate future holds.

“I’m going to plan on going every day. I might have to take a couple days off, but I’m going to go as hard as I can,” Bays said. “It’s not necessarily full-court. It’s even the three-on-threes and two-on-twos.
“I just play whenever I can get anyone to play with me.”

The next test of the knee might be on the dance floor instead of the basketball floor, though.

On Friday, Bays was shopping for a dress for the prom, which is May 15.

Could it be the most rigorous workout on her knee yet?

“Oh yeah,” Bays said. “I’m going to get my boogie on.”


 

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File photo/The Herald-Dispatch

Huntington's Whitney Bays goes to the basket on a fast break March 4, 2008, during the Highlanders' 65-33 opening-round win over the Bridgeport Indians in the WVSSAC Class AAA quarterfinals at the Charleston Civic Center. Bays said her knee injury will prevent her from playing for Huntington High during her senior season.

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