Savoring The Roses Despite the Thorns

by Andrew Lipton

NEW YORK - The sky is clearing and the night 

Has gone out

The sun, it come, the world to 

Soften up

Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice 

But to carry on-1

It’s unlikely the kids noticed Chloe.

On a warm early January day, hundreds of elementary and middle schools kids were inside the gymnasium on Rose Hill at Fordham University. They were there to see the Fordham University women’s basketball team play a game against the team from Virginia Commonwealth University.

The sound inside the gym - almost like a small arena - was maddeningly loud from the excited kids talking, jumping up and down, and cheering, along with the pre-game music blaring from the loudspeakers.

It was called Kids Day, an annual event on the schedules of many colleges.

Two thing don’t get old. Kids happy to be out of school. And kids enjoying watching older kids play sports. Kids look up to older students and are inspired by those who are good enough to play athletics at a high school or collegiate level.

Chloe could relate to that. While in middle school she saw, and was in awe of one of the most highly touted high school basketball players in the country, Breanna Stewart. It was in a gym at the New York State School championships.

And for Chloe and countless other kids there is the excitement of meeting a pro athlete for the first time. For Chloe, it was the thrill as a high schooler, meeting her first female pro, Stef Dolson, then of the Chicago Sky.

Chloe Chaffin was at the Rose Hill gym on Kids Day as a member of the Fordham women’s basketball team. It was a few weeks before she was about to start her last semester as a graduate student.

Chloe had spent countless hours the last four and a half years in that gym on Rose Hill.

But on Kids Day, Chloe was not wearing her team’s uniform. She would not be playing in the game that day. Dressed in a black t-shirt which read Ramily, a play on the words family and Rams, the school’s nickname, black stretch pants which doubled as slacks and workout attire, and bright white plain-looking sneakers that seemed to sparkle. The attire could have been a symbol for Chloe’s journey.

1 - From the song Carry On, written by Stephen Stills, and performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Before the game she was at once a solitary figure watching alone on the baseline near the basket as her teammate warmed up, and at the same time part of a team as she joined the outskirts of team huddles.

As I watched her watch her teammates, I kind of wondered what might be going through her mind that day, as well as on many, many similar days when she did not get to play. Not to play the game of basketball - a game she loved and at which she had once been very good. Was she thinking about yesterdays, today, or tomorrows?

Sitting on the far end of the Fordham bench during the game, the third seat from the end, followed by the strength and conditioning coach and the athletic trainer, she helped cheer, clap and extol her teammates, and joined team huddles. On the other side of her was another player, a freshman who was not playing that day. From the stands on the other side of the court, the noise in the arena helped drown out her voice. But if you paid close attention, at times her soprano voice cut through the din.

If you didn’t know her, you might question if her heart was really into supporting her teammates. But if you knew her, you knew she was into it.

Chloe grew up in a small city, Kingston, New York in upstate New York. There is only one public high school there, Kingston High School whose varsity and junior varsity basketball teams allow students from the few middle schools in the city to be on its teams.

Growing up in a small city, Chloe was always noticed. Not that she looked for attention. It was just the opposite. Clothed in modesty, she wore the real thing, not the fake imitations. Still does. She can’t even remember her precise basketball stats from high school.

At the age of two, attending her older sister’s basketball game, she threw back a basketball that had gone into the stands, catching the attention of a local newspaper writer who wrote a story that included a prediction of future basketball stardom for her.

Chloe’s early childhood was active. There was dance, swim, and basketball. Her loving parents supported the things she wanted to do. They didn’t push her. But she embraced basketball.

Her father played when he was younger and he coached in his community’s recreation league. Still coaches there. Chloe joined the league and started playing in about the third grade. It was a communal experience as parents and friends would attend those games.

She also played in public courts, often with boys who welcomed her. There were the games in the next-door neighbor’s driveway, an all-too familiar scenario, and it was with the boy next- door.

And before middle school, she was playing for an AAU team.

That AAU team practiced in the Kingston High School gym and the high school basketball coaches noticed her and encouraged her to keep improving as they saw the potential.

By the seventh grade, the Fordham women’s basketball coach Stephanie Gaitley noticed her also. Gaitley let it be known through an AAU tournament director that she wanted Chloe to attend her summer basketball game at Fordham. Chloe went. At the end of camp, Gaitley had offered Chloe a basketball scholarship.

 Chloe was so good at basketball that while in middle school, not only was she on the high school’s junior varsity team, she wound up making the varsity team in the middle of seventh grade. And she had not yet told the high school coaches that Fordham had offered her a scholarship. A year later she accepted Fordham’s scholarship offer.

Although it was five years away, Chloe had her future path mapped out. She was going to play basketball at a university that had a top-notch academic reputation, could provide a career path post-college, was a Division I school, and had a women’s basketball team that had become one of the best in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Chloe traveled this path seriously as she felt that she had been gifted a talent and she should do everything to continue to develop that talent. The desire to do the best possible is what Chloe calls competitive. And she will tell you that she has been very competitive.

Although she was consumed by basketball, often watching tapes of her game at home, or during lunch or study hall at school and traveling far to countless AAU games, she was an excellent student. A 90s student. And she played field hockey and ran sprints and long jumped for the track and field team.

She felt fortunate that she found a passion early in life that she could explore.

She became a basketball varsity starter in the ninth grade. In her last two seasons, her teammates had to take more notice of her. She was the team’s captain. She could be vocal, but with good intentions. It was about the good of the team and with the idea of building her teammates up, but also holding them accountable.

She played all the court positions depending on matchups. Her last season ended with a sectional championship and her becoming the fourth highest scorer in Kingston High School history. A thousand point scorer honored with a commemorative basketball at a ceremony at a game.

During this high school journey, dreams of playing professionally in the WNBA, or at least overseas, seemed reasonable to pursue. Why not go all out for something you love and are good at and can get better?

Destination - Fordham University Arrival - July 2018

Freshman Year

Chloe arrived at Fordham for her summer training with the team. The familiar mantra of players going to the next level of competition - they’re bigger, faster, and stronger - could be heard inside Chloe’s head. It was exciting, tiring, somewhat nerve-racking, and a lot of new things to think about and learn A lot of hard work in the gym besides taking a math class that month. But Chloe enjoyed it and felt she had something to prove. Was excited to see where it would go.

At the end of the summer, one of the assistant coaches, Angelika Szumilo (now the head women’s basketball coach at Iona College) told Chloe that the coaches wanted to try to work her into the playing rotation during the upcoming season and she thought Chloe would have a pretty good basketball career at Fordham.

 When fall practices began, Chloe started to make mistakes on the court. She was taking five classes that semester. It was overwhelming at times. But she kept things together emotionally. And she liked being busy. One of her philosophies: you don’t get time back.

Of course she remembers her first basket. First game she played at Fordham. An exhibition game. An up and under move.

And then the season began in November. Chloe played eleven and four minutes in the first two games, respectively.

She had been working extra hard to get up to speed. Body was sore, and knees were hurting. But this was to be expected. Chloe was spending time with the trainer to sooth the aches and pains.

The hard work seemed to be paying off. She was having a great practice soon after that second game. Going up for layup at the Rose Hill gym in that practice, Chloe landed and then collapsed as her left knee gave way. Screaming and crying on the ground, Chloe had never experienced such pain in her life.

In the days to follow: the throbbing pain, the severely swollen left knee, the crutches, and the MRI. Her mom came in from Kingston to take her to her MRI appointment. Chloe was hopeful the results of the MRI would show a minor injury.

It was serious. A torn ACL. Unfortunately, basketball players hear those three letters like toddlers learn their ABCs, early on and frequently.

ACL. Anterior Cruciate Ligament.

It was the first serious injury Chloe had experienced. But she knew about the severity of the injury. Both her dad and sister had torn their ACLs. Each of them had torn it twice and each had it torn in both knees.

Still, it was a tremendous blow, and there were more tears the evening of the day she received the doctor’s news. Chloe didn’t want to talk about it right away as she tried to figure out what it meant.

But she didn’t isolate herself and tried to maintain a sense of normalcy. Her teammates and coaches were supportive.

To prepare for the surgery, Chloe had to undergo painful rehabilitation (rehab) so that the chances of greater range of motion post-op would be increased. The surgery took place about six weeks after the injury. The prospect of being out under anesthesia for the surgery was scary, but the surgery went well. She was on crutches for a month after the surgery.

During this time and after surgery, Chloe still went to classes, and went to the team’s practices and games. There was the physical therapy rehab off campus three times a week and with the teams trainers twice a week. She was told it would take about nine months before she could play again.

The rehab was long and arduous and painful. The rehab continued into the fall. There were tears of pain. Walking was hard. It would take six months to be able to do basketball drills.

Going to all the practices might seem tedious and a waste of time. She had a choice. Be bitter or better. It was not going to be a pity party. She refused to bring down others.

 She supported and cheered her teammates. She offered input to teammates when appropriate. She focused on being the best version of herself.

And her relationships with her teammates, some of whom were her roommates, stayed the same. She never felt she wasn’t part of things.

And the basketball season ended with the team winning the Atlantic 10 Tournament Championship. Chloe felt every bit a part of the team even thought she didn’t play. A testament to her and her teammates and coaches.

She realized that she was going to play again as long as she followed the plan of the doctors, physical therapists, and trainers. And she would sill have four years of basketball playing eligibility.

And by watching her teammates in practice and games, she learned more about the game of basketball, Where to be on the court at different times without the pressure of having actually to do it in real time.

 Absorbing these lessons by watching was big. Her drills with assistant coach Candice Green before she was allowed to play in a scrimmage also furthered her basketball IQ.

Sophomore Year

It took longer than expected for Chloe to be allowed to play full-court basketball. December 2019. Thirteen months from the time of the injury. The season had already begun and the team was winning. Chloe got into her first game that season in January 2020.

It was hard for Chloe to get playing time as the team was winning. But she was happy and felt her basketball game had improved significantly. She now understood the game better, having been able to study it from the sidelines and having been given individual attention doing drills.

Her family continued to be amazingly supportive. Her mom and sister came to every home game traveling from Kingston to the Bronx and some away games that were not far away. And her dad also came to some games. This was also true her freshman year after she was injured.

Chloe only got to play in six games that season. When COVID struck, the basketball season had already ended except for a possible berth in the WNIT, a post-season tournament. Chloe went home to finish her classes online and to work out by herself.

Finding a place to practice at home was hard as parks were closed or hoops taken down. But she found a hoop in a middle school parking lot in Kingston. She focused on ball handling, conditioning and eating right.

Junior Year

When the team returned to campus in September, they were first only allowed to work out in small groups because of Covid.

Chloe was in great shape. She was in a good place. The demands of basketball and school were not overwhelming. She was doing extra workouts and thought she would get the opportunity to play significant minutes with significant contributions.

 At a full team practice in October 2020, before the season began, during a relay race, Chloe missed stepping on the end line and prematurely started running backwards to the starting line. Being meticulous, Chloe went back to the finish line to touch it and started to run backwards to the starting line. She heard a guttural noise. And felt a dull intense pain in her leg. She went down and could not walk.

The tears came as did the uncertainty of what had happened. Then the crutches and the MRI. And the doctor’s visit and the news. A ruptured Achilles tendon in the right leg.

Surgery, anesthesia, crutches, physical therapy rehab, and rehab with the trainers. Not a welcomed déjà vu.

To paraphrase Paul Simon, darkness had come to speak with Chloe again. The tears and crying were worse this time. More of it. More intense.

Chloe did not want to have to go through this again. But there was no choice. There were no thoughts of quitting the game she loved. She still had her scholarship and was going to get her degree from a great university. She would make the best of it as she had two more years to play ball after her third year in school.

The prognosis was that it would take nine to 12 months to be able to play basketball again.

And the question of whether she could get back to playing basketball at a respectable level lingered.

The dream of playing basketball in he WNBA had pretty much ended. She wanted to feel physically healthy again.

The physical therapy was less painful this time, but still very tedious and long.

And Chloe still felt supported by her teammates, coaches, doctors, and academic adviser.

And now she felt she could contribute more to her teammates. Chloe could see and understand more things on the court and felt more comfortable chiming in. The team was good and she would live her basketball life through others during the season.

By the end of the season, Chloe would get her undergraduate degree in communications and marketing and decide to go for her masters degree in early childhood education for the next two school years.

First Year of Graduate School (4th Year at Fordham)

November 2021. Chloe was ready to play full court basketball again.

But her left knee that had been surgically repaired and rehabilitated had different ideas.

In her first full court scrimmage practice back on the court, Chloe went up for a layup and, she tore her left ACL again, along with her meniscus.

And this time there would be no more basketball-playing again. There would be no more basketball seasons. Her basketball career was over at the age of 21.

 Chloe needed surgery again to regain the use of her leg. But even with the surgery, the doctors advised against any heavy pounding in the future if she wanted to be able to do some activities going forward and not have to undergo a knee replacement while she was still young. Hiking trails would still be in her future, but even pickup basketball games was advised against.

This time her mom and teammates cried with her. And the routine of going to rehab and going to practices and games continued.

There were a lot of rainy days. The tears came while watching practices. The mourning was more public.

Her roommate that season and this season, Lexi Tarul also tore her ACL. This time, Chloe would be not be alone in her physical recovery. Although the rehab was still long, the intensity lessened as she wasn’t try to get back into basketball playing shape.

Second Year Graduate Student (5th Year at Fordham)

Fans of college athletics often forget about the student part of the student-athlete. Bur Chloe never did. She graduated cum laude in three years with a 3.5 GPA and received her bachelor of arts degree in communications and marketing. All the while getting around campus for stretches of time on crutches, long stretches of time having to go through rehabilitation sessions, devoting so much time to watching or playing in practices, and going to games.

Last month, Chloe received her master’s degree in early childhood education. This will allow her to take the licensing exams to teach children with and without special needs.

Her first year as a graduate student was spent taking education courses.

The first semester of this school year was spent taking four classes in the evening, and by day, being a solo full-time teacher in a large non-special education kindergarten class but with some kids with disabilities, at a Bronx charter school. A very difficult situation as her co-teacher early on was transferred to another class. Chloe was supposed to be the student-teacher and became the one and only teacher.

This spring semester she student-taught in a small special education class of kindergarteners and first-graders at a Bronx public school. A very, very gratifying experience.

Underlying the label of student-athlete is a person. A human being.

In the fall of 2019, Chloe felt something was missing in her life and formed with two friends a bible studies group once a week. This went on for a while. She always believed in G-d, but this was a way of trying to understand G-d. Understanding the Bible helped her accept things and gave her comfort that she would be ok even if she couldn’t always see the answers to life. She accepted that G-d had the answers.

Chloe served on a diversity and inclusion committee along with students, coaches, and administrators at Fordham. Her team community service included handing out food to the needy on Fordham Road, volunteering at a food pantry, and providing company for some of the Jesuits at Fordham.

And by the way, kids have noticed Chloe because she has noticed them.

 In high school, Chloe coached a basketball team of students with special needs and saw how meaningful it was to them and their parents. She coached kids at the Fordham basketball camps in the summers they were held. She read to special needs kids and non-special needs kids in local Bronx schools as part of her team’s community service.

This past fall and spring Chloe and Lexi coached girls 5th and 6th grade CYO basketball in an elementary school where Lexi’s dad is the athletic director. If they hadn’t volunteered, there might not have been a team.

Chloe was inspired by her ninth grade algebra teacher of the importance of good teachers. She has kept in touch with him and he gave her advise when she decided to become a special education teacher near the end of her junior year Fordham.

Goodbye, Rose Hill

Now, as she is about to leave Fordham, the routine of the basketball life has ended.

Having taught this last school year, Chloe believes in the profession’s high calling. But she is not sure it will make her happy. She expects to still take her teaching licensing exams. But at age 22 with no-one to support but herself, she believes this is the time to explore other career options. This summer Chloe will use her undergraduate degree to explore a career in marketing and has secured an internship in marketing.

There was no time for internships during her time at Fordham between rehabs, COVID, basketball practices, summer basketball training sessions and classes. Now she is free to explore.

As her days as a student at a prestigious academic university wind down, reflecting on great memories of her education and the friendships and relationships she made take up space in her head. Crazy good people she says of Fordham. She has never taken those relationships for granted.

The amount of time Chloe spent with her teammates and coaches at Fordham is too much to calculate. And from the outside looking in, it’s hard to truly appreciate the lifelong bonds that are formed by being on a team, whether you play or not. These bonds do not diminish over time or distance.

As for her once promising basketball career, Chloe has found peace. The Almighty, she says, has a plan.

And she wouldn’t change the past. She feels it has been part of an amazing experience.

She looks back on her team’s A-10 Tournament Championship as a very, very special experience despite not playing due to the knee injury.

There were many, many rough times. The physical pain of the injury and the rehabs, the doctors visits, the surgeries and anesthesias, the crutches, the physical rehabs, and watching practices and games from the sidelines.

The days spent wondering how she could get though not playing the game that was not just in her blood, but was in her soul.

 Many tears were shed by Chloe Chaffin in pain and sorrow up on Rose Hill. But those tears have long dried.

Chloe Chaffin has chosen to bask in and utilize the great treasures she found on Rose Hill. Treasures that should be everlasting.