After serious knee injury, Catholic High's Sydney Mains showed championship grit

When Knoxville Catholic junior Sydney Mains, 17, was lying on the court holding her left knee during an Under Armour girls basketball tournament in Hoover, Alabama, in April 2022, she might have thought her playing days were over.

It took her nine months to recover from a torn ACL, MCL and meniscus; but recover she did.

Eleven months after her surgery, Mains was back on the court – winning, leading her team to the TSSAA Division II-AA state championship.

She didn’t let herself be defeated by the injury. Instead, she worked on her shooting game. When she returned to the court her shooting was better than ever. She averaged 18.3 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 2.1 assists for the season.

Asked what makes a championship player, Mains said, “Work hard, be humble, be able to talk to people. Work hard on the court, revert back to your training. How hard you work reflects on how well you’ll do on the court.”

Basketball is all in the family for Mains. Her father, Travis Mains, is the girls basketball coach at Knoxville Catholic High School. He put Sydney on the court when she was barely in kindergarten. She took to it like a duck to water.

She said she’s used to playing for her father. “He’s a strong coach and we are great together because we separate home from the court.”

Coach Mains said a player of Sydney’s caliber has to have a lot of heart, grit, persistence, and a little bit of luck.

“Sydney has all of these things. She’s very persistent and very determined,” he said. “When she got injured, it was like being hit in the stomach. It was pretty scary. As a parent, you don’t want to see your kid go down like that.

“To come back from an injury like that to help lead the team to a championship win is pretty amazing,” said coach Mains. “It’s very rare for a teenager to even want to do that, much less accomplish it.

“It’s the first championship for Knoxville Catholic,” said Mains, who himself was named Coach of the Year by Knox News.

“They went from never playing a tournament to winning a championship game. It’s all the kids. I tell them what to do and they listen. It’s pretty cool, and they’re pretty amazing.”

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Knoxville Catholic's Sydney Mains beats injury, leads championship run