Emma Rainey and Bearden faced Farragut on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025 at Bearden High School in Knoxville, Tenn. (Photo by Tanner Walker/5SP)
BY DAVE LINK
Bearden junior Emma Rainey appreciates every chance she gets to play basketball and soccer.
She’s spent too much time out of action while rehabbing from two ACL tears and surgeries to the same knee.
Rainey never considered giving up the two sports.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Why do I keep doing it?’,” Rainey said Sunday night, “and my big thing is I’m very based in my faith, and I believe that if it’s in the Lord’s plan for me to tear my ACL again, that there’s absolutely nothing that I can do, whether I don’t play a sport or I do play a sport, that’s going to change that.
“So that’s really what keeps me playing both the sports that I love.”
Bearden girls’ basketball coach Justin Underwood has been around Rainey for both knee ordeals.
And he asked Rainey the same question others asked when she got hurt.
“The first conversation is, ‘What do you want to do?’” Underwood said. “Ultimately, it needs to be her decision, and there was no question (about playing or not). Emma’s physical toughness for what she has been through with two ACL injuries is impressive. Her mental toughness from what she has been through is elite.
“All athletes deal with adversity, but few are able to use such tough setbacks for opportunities of growth like she has.”
It’s been a process for a couple of years.
GOING TO BEARDEN
Rainey, a point guard/wing, was one of the area’s top basketball players coming out of Karns Middle School and chose to attend Bearden.
As a freshman in 2022-23, Rainey joined two powerhouse teams at Bearden. The Lady Bulldogs were coming off state championships in soccer in 2021 and basketball in 2022.
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