Alexa Philippu, you're here to take us inside your reporting on Yukon basketball star

Paige Beckers, who I like to call Paige Buckets by the way in this household.

But where should we start with this story today?

This story starts on August 1st, 2022. That evening about 15 months ago, Paige Beckers, the biggest star in women's college

basketball at the time was sitting in a waiting room,

waiting to hear the results of two MRIs

that she had taken that evening on her left knee.

Earlier that day, she injured the knee in practice, but she was actually cautiously optimistic

because there's an initial manual test that was done on her knee that suggested her ECL may have been spared.

But then the doctor came in and delivered the knockout blow

and said, unfortunately, it looks like your ECL's torn.

Beckers sat there in silence as the normity of that sentence sunk in.

To describe the week after the injury as really hell.

I was having like anxiety, panic attacks like I had a hard time

believing that it was real like I didn't believe that I was in that position I thought it was

a dream I would always have to be like sorry pinched me but it was like a lot of long

nights just staying up not being able to sleep.

And it was so hard for her to understand at first why something like this was happening to her.

But what's happened now that she's 15 months out from that injury is that it might be possible that that whole experience

ends up being a blessing in disguise as one member of her recovery team put it to me

and that's because tearing her ACL to overhaul her approach to the game,

not just so that she could come back from this injury,

...