Stacey Kersten has fought hard throughout her four-year career as a volleyball player for the Loyola Wolfpack. Kersten, mass communication senior, thought she had gotten the flu while playing for Loyola on December 2006. “As I was getting better, one day I woke up and couldn’t move. I was paralyzed,” she said. “My hands were clenched. My dad had to pick me up and carry me to my house.”

From there, she was taken to the hospital where they told her, “We’re admitting you right now because we can’t figure it out,” she said. Kersten remembers not reacting to what was said because she was she was in a lot of pain. “I wasn’t thinking about the future. I was just worried about that moment,” she said.

She spent more than a week in the hospital, where her mother had to feed her. “This upset me a lot, because I’m twenty years old and my mom shouldn’t feed me,” she said. When she was released from the hospital, the battle was not over, yet.

Kersten had to use a walker to move around, slowly teaching her body how to work again. “That spring, when I went back to school and while everybody was practicing, I was just there doing therapy, relearning how to walk,” she said.

While Kersten said she thought what she was doing wasn’t worth the work, the people around her motivated her to keep going.

“My teammates and my love for the game got me through it,” she said. She said she remembered telling freshmen how lucky they were to be playing volleyball in college. “I wasn’t going to let anything stop me from playing,” she said.

Kersten’s greatest supporter was her old roommate and high school friend, Danielle Posey. Kersten, who attended Ridgewood,, met Posey, who attended rival high school, Country Day. They reunited at Loyola when Posey transferred to Loyola the semester after Hurricane Katrina and became roommates. She then decided to move to North Carolina.

Even though she got through it, she remembers multiple times where she came very close to quitting. “That happened multiple times. It’s just that the therapy hurt so bad,” she said. It was Posey, however, that helped her remain focused and motivated to complete her rehabilitation to come back and play. “She used to call me “Little” and she would say ‘Come on “Little” you have to do it. We need you,’ and that’s what pushed me through,” Kersten said.

She has been playing volleyball for 14 years, hitting a ball for the first time when she was 8. “My mom threw me into the playground. She said ‘I want you to try everything and stick with what you like,'” Kersten said. It was during that time that she looked up to two-time gold medalist Misty May.

When Kersten was ten, she played setter for “Cajunland,” a club team. She is now a coach for her former team. “It’s weird to coach the girls. I definitely see the other side of it and see the coach’s point of view,” she said.

Kersten has noticed a difference in the mentality of the children that play there now. “I played because I loved what I was doing. It seems they play now because the parents are forcing them to. Some of them want to learn, while others are there just to have a good time,” she said.

Kersten says she will continue to play as long as she enjoys it. “I was the kid who looked forward to going to practice,” she said. At college, however, she says she sometimes could not wait for the season to end. At Loyola she would have to balance school, work and practice every day. “I was never tired of the sport. I was just tired of the same routine,” Kersten said.

Being a student-athlete, she had to balance school with volleyball, which could be difficult to do sometimes. “I would study at night and would bring everything I needed during the road trips,” she said. Although Kersten had a difficult time during her freshman year, she was able to turn it around. The following year she was able to maintain a balance between volleyball and school without affecting either one because of her discipline and commitment. “I was in for a rude awakening when I got here my freshman year, but that made me realize that I had to balance my time,” she said.

When she arrived a Loyola, she became a defensive specialist, and did not think the level of competition was that tough, mainly because she had played club volleyball. She, however, found it difficult to perfect her game. “I had a hard time improving on defense. There are certain things you have to see ahead of time to react quickly, and that was the most difficult thing for me to learn,” she said.

Eduardo Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected]