Jacksonville's girls basketball team returned to the court a week after a fatal wreck took one teammate and put two more in the hospital.
JACKSONVILLE — Through tears and with a heavy burden, Chloe Kuhn recalled so many fond memories of teammate Adelisa "Addy" Rose Johnson.
Johnson, 15, was killed in a single-vehicle rollover on Friday, Jan. 23. Two of her teammates on the Jacksonville High School girls basketball team were sent to the hospital — seniors Autumn Gause and Camryn Chumley — along with a boy, Ronan Empie, also a Jacksonville student.
“She could never stop laughing, and she made the entire team laugh every practice,” Kuhn, a senior, said following the Crimsons’ first home game after the tragedy on Saturday, Jan. 31. “(Coach Dave Farris) would yell at us all the time (about the laughter and silliness), but Addy just couldn't stop. She took nothing too seriously, and she always had a way to make practice better just by showing up, just by being there. Addy brought a light into the room that no one else could.
“(Addy was) definitely the class clown. She was 100% the funniest one there, and she was just amazing. Her spirit really was what pushed us through practice, what made us keep going, because all the conditioning, all the hard work, it doesn't mean anything if you're not having fun, and Addy let us have fun. She made us have fun.”
It was a sentiment shared by Farris and Gause.
“We do miss Addy's presence,” said Farris, who is in his first season with the Crimsons after 18 seasons at Auburn. “I could get upset with her, and she'd turn around, and kind of put a key through her lips and go like that (turn the key) and then just give you the smile and that twinkle in her eye, and it's been that way since day one.”
Gause was at the game at the JHS Bowl, one day after being released from the hospital with injuries to her spine, sternum, and neck. She was in a wheelchair and following the game, a 57-24 loss to Bloomington, the team took center court with Gause and did a postgame huddle and yell.
“I was talking to the wall a week ago, and Addy didn't warn me,” Gause said. “She swears up and down that she warned me, but she really didn't. But Addy's energy, her laughter, she's just unmatchable. There's nobody like her.”
Continuing for Addy
Following the wreck, weather canceled the first day back to school on Monday, Jan. 26. Instead, the team met at the school’s west gym. Farris told the players that a decision needed to be made on whether to continue the season. All three players involved in the crash either started or played heavy minutes. Farris said he would not chime in, nor would he steer the conversation, but that he’d support whichever decision the team made.
Quickly, they voted to keep going.
"(The players) decided we were going to keep going,” Kuhn said. “Then we went to The Bowl. We came here, and we got a feel for it here without our teammates first, and then the next day at practice, there were tears, but there was also laughter. And day after day, it got easier, but it's still hard to go without.”
While Farris didn’t want to weigh in on the decision, he did watch his players' body language.
“Two or three of them came forward and said some really nice things about why they wanted to (continue the season), and I'm watching the body language of all the kids,” Farris said. “Kids don't want to upset other kids by saying, ‘No, I don't want to do it,’ so I'm watching them, I got no body language (that anyone was hesitant) and as soon as we said who wants to do it, it was just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom: ‘I want to do it.’”
Kuhn knows all too well absence and loss. She said she has lost two sisters and a friend who committed suicide. But grief, she said, has no playbook, and it never gets easier.
“I've been through this before, but it's just as hard every time,” Kuhn said.
The team practiced during the week before the Crimsons took the court for their first game following the accident on Friday, Jan. 30, at Decatur Eisenhower.
Kuhn thought having the first game back on the road served the players better than opening at home.
“It's a lot harder to play when you're in front of all these people that are looking at you, and they know what's happened to you,” Kuhn said. “You know they feel bad for you, but you don't really care about that: you just want your teammates back.
“(Jan. 30), when we went to the game, it was definitely a lot better, and we had a lot of support from (Eisenhower). They were very kind, and it was a good way to get back into it, even though we lost.”
Junior Jera Wardell said the bus ride to and from Decatur was a good chance to reflect and to distract from the burden the players had been carrying for a week.
“It was very hard. It was a good distraction, but nothing can really distract,” Wardell said. “I kind of just put my AirPods in and kind of thought about everything.”
Return home
Before the Crimsons took the court in front of their home fans on Jan. 31, three seats on the Jacksonville bench were adorned with the jerseys for Johnson, Gause and Chumley. Every chair had a pink rose — Addy’s favorite color — while Addy’s chair had a bouquet of a dozen pink roses. The assistant coaches wore shirts that had jersey numbers for the three victims — Chumley’s No. 22, Johnson’s 23 and Gause’s 34 — and it read 'Crimsons Forever' with a halo above Johnson’s number.
Wardell was surprised by the outpouring of fans when she came out of the tunnel before the game.
“We normally don't have this many people, so the amount of people that showed up for Addy was (good to see),” Wardell said.
Gause had a front-row seat.
“It warmed my heart,” she said. “I love watching them play.”
To move forward, the junior varsity team was merged into the varsity team. For the rest of the season, the two teams will be as one. No JV games. Farris said he was trying to slowly get the team back into a routine.
“Tuesday (Jan. 27) was the first day of ‘practice.’ I didn't push them, just kind of let them shoot and then we did drills to just keep them shooting,” Farris said. “That's all we did for the whole practice was drills. The next day I introduced a little more, let's get back to the basic things here: going over the plays and stuff. There's so much going on in their minds that it's hard to remember all this stuff and that stuff.”
Remembering Addy
Though she’s gone far too soon, Johnson left a legacy that won’t be forgotten anytime soon.
“At times they're quiet, and then at other times they're making fun of me, or they just start laughing about something,” Farris said of the atmosphere in practice. “Like they said, Addy was the perfect person to have on your team. She just enjoyed life.
“By the smile on her face and what you saw in her eyes, if she did something and I'm irritated, she'd just do something — a little dance — and the kids would be cracking up. I'm trying to be tough on the outside, but I'm laughing inside. She was just perfect for our team. Everybody likes her (like) Ferris Bueller.”
Kuhn said Johnson wouldn’t want her friends to grieve.
“I think we all know how Addy felt about life,” Kuhn said. “Addy loved her life, and she would never want us to go on not living our life to the fullest. So I think while grieving, we also have to remember that we have to push on for Addy, and live like Addy, and be positive like Addy, and smile for Addy, and do all these things that we wouldn't normally do, because that's what Addy would want.”
Gause said she had an important message to share.
“Always wear a seatbelt,” Gause said. “Make sure you wear your seatbelt, because mine just saved my life. God definitely gave me a second chance, and I'm forever grateful for that.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, [email protected], Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Playing through tears — Jacksonville girls basketball continues after wreck
Category: General Sports
