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going to follow in Taurasi���s footsteps as the next UCONN phenom. ���My parents always told me, ���Make sure you have a plan B, you never know what could happen,������ Jacki says. ���But I just brushed them off. I never thought anything bad was going to happen.��� Until it did. In a playoff game during her senior season, Jacki tore the ACL in her right knee for the ���rst time. This was the ���rst injury of her entire career. A s one of the most highlytouted recruits for the Women of Troy, Jacki redshirted her freshman year in 200607 to rehabilitate fully. Yet in offseason workouts, she tore the same ACL, sidelining her again for another year (2007-08). The hits kept coming. Just before the start of the 2008-09 season, she tore the ACL in her left knee for the ���rst time, missing her junior year. After completing rehab for the third time, and ready to begin her senior year (2009-10), the training staff discovered that during rehab on her left knee, her body had rejected the graft used to repair the tear, leading to yet another reconstruction, her fourth. Jacki fought her way back and eventually made her college debut at Cal on Feb. 4, 2010, scoring eight points with ���ve rebounds and ���ve assists, but played just 11 games that season. A Division I athlete is only as good as their body is healthy. To play at that level, the body is put under the most grueling duress of conditioning, weight training, healthy eating and competition. And to someone who spent years conditioning her body to perform at the highest level, Jacki thought her body had failed her. Nothing she could do could make her knees feel like they did when she was a child, running around the court, laughing, jumping and never stopping. They became either too stiff or too loose. A mix of jelly and concrete. Never right, and never going to be again. According to a 2010 study by Dr. Timothy E. Hewett in the November issue of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) Now, female athletes involved in pivoting or jumping sports (such as basketball) are 2-to-10 times more susceptible to ACL injuries than their male counterparts. Hewett cited biomechanic and neuromuscular factors to be among the causes. She watched her basketball career slip away. ���There were doubts,��� she says. ���Not so much after the ���rst or second injury. But the third, fourth, or ���fth time, I said to myself, ���I don���t know if I���m capable of doing this anymore.������ She started to retrace her choices the way a coach tries to figure out why his team lost by one point on a last-second shot. What if she would have gone to Storrs, Connecticut, sticking to her original commitment to Coach Geno Auriemma, after backing out to be closer to home? ���Who knows how another program would have reacted to all of this?��� she says. ���That thought in my head, if I went to UCONN, would I still have done it two, three, four or even ���ve times? Of course that���s in my mind. ���But the fact is, I didn���t go there, and I did go to USC, and I truly feel it���s the best decision I ever made in my life.��� The type of loyalty she received at USC is impressive. At that level of athletics, you can argue that athletes are bodies ���rst, people/ students second. And yet her scholarship was never revoked, her surgeries never rushed, her relationships never strained. USC supported not one degree, but two. After receiving her bachelor���s in sociology, she pursued a master���s in gerontology for the next two years while continuing to play ball. As a ���rst-year graduate student, Jacki played her ���rst full season in 2010-11, establishing herself as a leader on the team. USC compiled the most wins since 1994, going to the 2011 WNIT Finals. That summer Jacki even made the 2011 Team USA World University Games team, winning a gold medal alongside premier players like Skylar Diggins and Elena Delle Donne. She was even named to the Naismith Award Early-Season Watch List. Moving, ���owing and even sprinting��� playing rather than thinking. Jacki entered back into her space on the court and never wanted to leave. Until it was all taken away again quicker than it came. S he knew. As soon as Jacki hit the ���oor in December of her ���nal year of graduate school, a look to the training staff said it all: they all knew. That pop. That pain. This had to be the end. The possibility of cracking a WNBA roster faded from the consciousness of the people closest to her after she ran out of NCAA eligibility. Her parents wanted her to walk away from the game for good. ���Her Mom [Linda] and I assumed that it was ���nally over,��� says Steve Gemelos. ���We felt pretty strongly that she should move on, and get into coaching or something like that; anything besides playing.��� Jacki didn���t want to be one of those���a could have been, a should have been. If she didn���t try one last time, she���d wonder ���what if��� for the rest of her life. Steve and Linda had no choice but to support her. Many call her crazy. Even stupid, saying she���ll be lucky to be walking at 40. ���Don���t you know it���s just a game?��� follows her 32 wherever she goes. But it���s not. Not to her, at least. ���Everybody has a dream, and mine happens to play in the WNBA,��� says Jacki. ���Everyone���s entitled to their own opinions, but I���m doing this for myself. I have to do this.��� So what if she doesn���t make the Lynx roster come training camp? ���To be honest it scares the hell out of me,��� says Steve. ���It���ll be devastating for all of us. We want it for her, not for us. I have lived vicariously through her as an ex-player but at this point, we just want her to be happy. ���I don���t have the courage or perserverance or inner-strength that she does,��� Steve continues. ���It���s just mind-boggling. Just for her to go through those surgeries and rehabs, and after all of that hard work and pain and suffering, it just blows me away that she���s still playing.��� Along the way, Jacki has had to accept that she may not get off the ground like she used to, or turn the corner as quickly or as swiftly as she used to, but the ball still feels a part of her hand, the net still welcomes her shot. ���I���m used to people saying, ���She was so good��� or ���She could have been this or that,������ says Jacki. ���This is my game now. I may not be the player I used to be, but that���s what I���m learning to live with, to accept the new me.��� It has taken her between eight and 12 months to heal from her previous ACL injuries. Currently working out at USC with long-time trainer John Meyer, as of press time, Jacki has been cleared to begin again at full speed. While rehabbing last summer, the Lynx reached the 2012 WNBA Finals for the second consecutive year before losing to the Indiana Fever 3-1 for the title. With more women playing basketball than ever before, why would one of the WNBA���s most competitive franchises take a chance on one of the most vulnerable players in the 2012 Draft class? ���Jacki���s one heck of a basketball player,��� says Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve. ���That���s always ���rst and foremost why you draft someone. And second, given all that she���s been through, having an opportunity to at least try to have a professional career, we thought it was important to give her that opportunity. ���She certainly has shown a lot of perserverance. We think she would still have the opportunity at her size and skillset to see what she can do.��� After ���nishing the regular season 27-7 for the league���s best record, the Lynx are determined to reclaim the championship. ���I���d say it���s a very bad taste in our mouth,��� says Reeve. ���I���d be very surprised if we weren���t really hungry to try to get that championship back in Minny. I���ve got winners on this team. Every time we���ve fallen short we���ve always been a group that comes back together and tries to do better.��� Sounds like Jacki will ���t right in.