Sarah Besselink finished off her final Capital Hoops Classic with joy after battling two season-ending knee injuries.
The fifth-year University of Ottawa (U of O) Gee-Gees guard scored a team-high 15 points against the Carleton Ravens in their 61-52 victory on Feb. 1.
“It’s one of those memories that I’m not going to forget,” she said.
Besselink comes from a “big basketball family” in Kingston—almost all her aunts and uncles played post-secondary basketball. Her younger sister, Mary, also plays on the Gee-Gees.
Besselink’s the oldest among 15 cousins, leading her family’s next generation. She said it was really special to have her family at the game.
“They just all supported me, and they text me after every game and they watch my games,” she said. “It was just nice.”
They watched as she led Holy Cross Catholic Secondary school to an unexpected OFSAA Finals appearance in her Grade 13 year in 2012.
She got offers from many schools but U of O head coach Andy Sparks didn’t give her much consideration when he first saw her.
“He basically said ‘it wasn’t your best game,’” Besselink said. “He needed some warming up to me as a player, and I didn’t play that well anyways.”
After playing with the Kingston Impact in the JUEL of Ontario, she gained more attention and chose the Gee-Gees.
“It still had that small feel and the basketball was great,” she said. “Kellie Ring was one of the best players in the country. Why would I pass up an opportunity to play with her?”
Besselink said she was nervous in her first training camp with the Gee-Gees but also excited.
She slept on a mattress on her apartment floor. She also had to adjust to the human kinetics program after taking the second semester of Grade 13 off to work.
After injuries hit the Gee-Gees, opportunities opened up for her.
“I was just thrown into it,” she said. “Coach didn’t really have a choice but to put me in.”
She was named to the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) East all-rookie team in 2014. Then, she tore her ACL halfway through her second season.
When the Gee-Gees were playing the University of Toronto Varsity Blues on Dec. 29, Besselink scored a career-high 29 points the day before, but her season came crashing down as she jumped up for a high pass in the first 30 seconds of the game.
“I can still recreate it perfectly, exactly what happened. But, I knew right away I had torn my ACL,” she said.
“I went to the ground, grabbing my knee, pretty much in pain, a lot of pain,” she added. “Kellie Ring was one of the first ones that got to me.”
Besselink knew she had torn her ACL the moment it happened but Ring assured her it would be okay.
Besselink couldn’t sleep that night.
“My knee was blowing up huge, and I couldn’t walk,” she said. “My teammates were wheeling me around in a wheelchair.”
She got an MRI shortly afterwards and went for knee surgery in February, losing the season and a year of eligibility. For her, the MRI results were especially devastating.
“That was the next time I cried, and it finally hit me,” she said. “Your season’s over and you’re going to have surgery and I never had surgery before. I was 19, 20.”
She was able to recover alongside teammate Danielle Marion, who also tore her ACL but was motivated by her love for the game.
“You try and push the limits,” she said. “Every time I met with my surgeon, I was like, ‘can I do this now? Can I do this now? Am I able to jump? Can I start shooting?’ Anything to just touch a ball.”
When she returned in 2015, she said there was still hesitation.
“The toughest part is the mental side of it,” she said. “The physical side—you make small steps along the way, but nobody really talks about how you’re going to shy away from contact. I was running with a limp.”
“I didn’t think I was running with a limp but I watch myself on video and was like ‘oh my god, why am I running like that,’” she added. “It’s just the mental aspect of trying to protect your knee and subconsciously, you don’t even realize you’re doing it.”
She said she had to change how she played.
“I wasn’t a super fast player, but having that injury slowed me down even more. I had to figure out other ways to be effective,” she said. “I had to become a better shooter.”
Besselink said she started to play like herself again by February 2016—a year after the surgery. That season, the Gee-Gees set a school best with a 17-2 record. They finished second at provincials and went to nationals before losing in the quarter-finals.
“Going to nationals was really, really cool and ever since we’ve gone, I was like, ‘I need to go back before my career’s over,’” she said.
While the Gee-Gees didn’t go back, she continued to progress in her own career. She posted career-highs in multiple categories and was named an OUA Second-Team All-star in 2016-17.
She then tore her meniscus in the same left knee as her ACL.
“I have no idea how I tore my meniscus,” Besselink said. “My knee was just kind of bothering me and it swelled and it was huge, and I was like ‘okay, I’m going to try and play through it.’ It wasn’t super painful. It was just super huge.”
She got an MRI and had a choice: have the meniscus “cleaned up” and be back in a month or have it repaired and go through surgery—again.
Besselink remembers calling her parents with tears in her eyes—upset about having to go through another rehabilition process. Besselink chose surgery and missed the 2017-18 season.
“I was like, you know what, I’d rather be safe than sorry,” she said. “As much as that absolutely sucked because it was my final season and I felt like I was letting my team down a lot, it was obviously the better decision.”
Besselink said while it was difficult for her to sit out, she had comfort knowing her teammates understood her position.
“It was really frustrating for a long time at the beginning of the season with where I was going to fit and I didn’t feel like myself,” she said.
It took her until November to find herself again. She matched her career-high with 29 points against the Guelph University Gryphons before the holiday break, almost four years since she tore her ACL.
“I joked after the game, ‘coach, you couldn’t have left me on a little bit longer for me to get a new career high,’” she said. “It was definitely pretty cool that it kind of came full circle.”
She hopes to finish off her career on a high note. Besselink is currently in teachers’ college and plans to be a phys-ed teacher and coach. She said she’s grown from her basketball experience.
“You learn to appreciate everything because I’ve had it taken away from me in a sense, especially in my final season,” she said. “I learned to appreciate going to practice or lifting weights or having a purpose to do something because I know that feeling, I’ve had that feeling of I physically can’t do it.”
Besselink will play for the final time at Queen’s University on Feb. 8. She’ll be back in Kingston–where it all began.
“It’ll be super nice to have lots of my embarrassing family in the stands,” she said. “That’ll be special.”
Image by Greg Mason
