Hinsdale South senior Anna Wilcox plays every game as if it will be her last.
Whether she is guarding the opponent’s best player, fighting for a rebound or diving on the floor for a loose ball, the 5-foot-7 guard brings an unmatched intensity that borders on abandon after recovering from a torn ACL.
“She’ll go for a ball, and something will buckle, and my heart stops,” Hinsdale South coach Katie Salley said. “I ask, ‘Are you OK?’ And she’s like, ‘I’m fine.’
“So (injury) is not even a worry in her mind, which is incredible because I think the hardest part is the mental part. She goes out there and she plays like nothing happened.”
Thirteen months ago, something did happen, and it wasn’t good.
“It was our Thanksgiving tournament on our home floor,” Wilcox said. “I was going for a rebound. The ball was bouncing out of bounds.
“There was my opponent running right next to me, and we were both reaching for the ball. I just stepped straight-legged on my leg and just twisted it.”
Wilcox’s injury wiped out her basketball and soccer seasons and threatened to do the same to her senior season of cross country. Physical therapy ensued, testing the mental and physical strength of someone who has been active in sports since she could walk.
As a sophomore, Wilcox was a starter on the girls basketball team, which finished fourth in Class 3A and earned the program’s first state trophy. She is also a starting midfielder on the girls soccer team and had qualified for the Class 2A state meet in cross country as a junior.
“The hardest part was knowing that I’m sitting on the sidelines and there’s honestly nothing I can do,” Wilcox said. “Yes, I’m going to PT, but I’ll still be out for months, and I was watching my teammates play and knowing that I wouldn’t be able to do that for a year.”
But Wilcox found strength in the support she got from teammates and coaches in basketball and soccer.
“At the beginning of soccer season, when we were getting our jerseys on jersey day and taking pictures, I went up to my coach and said, ‘Oh, I don’t need a jersey,’ because we knew that I would be out for the entire season,” Wilcox said. “My coach (Jen Belmonte) told me, ‘You’re getting a jersey, you’re getting a bag and sweats and everything. You’re going to be in the team picture.’
“I feel like moments like that are what kept me going, to be part of the team even if I didn’t believe in myself. For my coach and my teammates to be like, ‘No, you’re still part of the team,’ that motivated me even when it was really hard to see far into the future.”
Wilcox’s recovery took eight months. She wasn’t cleared to compete until late August, but she got the OK to participate in a cross country meet at Peoria’s Detweiller Park, the site of the state meet, at the end of July.
“It’s a preseason meet, so it’s not taken super seriously,” she said. “But it’s really fun, and I’ve been doing it since my freshman year.
“I knew that I wanted to run it, and I still wasn’t 100%. But I asked my physical therapist. He told me I could run on predictable surfaces, and that’s a flat course.”
Mother Nature threw a wrinkle at Wilcox. Thunderstorms delayed the meet.
“It’s a race that’s run at night, so it was pitch black,” she said. “It was so muddy, and then the team actually left.”
Wilcox said she and two teammates decided to stay, and they ran in the rain at 11 p.m.
“Physically, it might not have been the best choice to do that when I wasn’t even 100% cleared,” Wilcox said. “But mentally I knew that I needed to run that to tell myself that I would be back and that I would do well.
“I’m very fortunate that my PT let me do that. I feel like that’s when I realized that I can be back, and everyone was so supportive.”
Wilcox came back better than ever. She again qualified for the state meet, where she finished 118th, improving her time from the previous year by nearly 30 seconds.
Wilcox’s return to the basketball court has proved to be just as successful. Through Sunday, she was averaging 2.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 1.9 steals and was shooting 82% on free throws for the Hornets (11-3), who look like a vastly improved team after winning 13 games last season.
“Those seniors have been together now for four years,” said Salley, who is in her first season as coach. “They know Anna’s Anna. Anna’s going to do everything to make everyone else successful.”
Hinsdale South senior forward Maeve Savage has known Wilcox since they were in elementary school.
“She’s an amazing player,” Savage said. “Last year, we really struggled without her. Our coach didn’t hold people accountable. People didn’t show up, but Anna showed up every single day, every single practice, every single game, and she couldn’t even play. I think that speaks volumes to the kind of person she is.”
Wilcox said she’s grateful for the support from her teammates and Salley.
“Coach Salley was our assistant two years ago when we had the state run, so I know her, and she knows me,” Wilcox said. “She knew how much I wanted to be back.
“It felt like I stepped in without taking a year off because most of the people that are on our basketball team are seniors that I have played with since freshman year. So getting back to the team was really easy.”
Wilcox has never been the Hornets’ leading scorer, but she makes the tough stuff look easy.
“This year, she’s such a big role player,” Savage said. “Maybe she doesn’t have the most points on the board, but she will always be diving on the floor for balls, boxing out, getting rebounds. She’ll guard the biggest girl on the court. So she’s an amazing teammate.”
Sports have always been important to the energetic Wilcox, whose parents, George and Becky, let her play any sport she wanted when she was growing up.
Wilcox wears No. 24 in honor of her mother, who wore it at Hinsdale Central. Becky Wilcox also played college basketball at Augustana and returned to teach at Hinsdale Central, where she worked as the softball coach and as an assistant under girls basketball coach Steve Gross on the team that won the 2002 Class AA state title.
George Wilcox, who worked for 28 years as a reporter covering high school sports in the Chicago area, often comes home from work to find Becky and Anna walking through plays in the kitchen. Sometimes he’s asked to stand in a certain spot to simulate a defender.
“I still do that because my mom played basketball in college and coached for a while, so she knows what she’s talking about,” Anna Wilcox said. “I go home, and I get the postgame talk from her, and she’ll show me things.
“I’m really glad that my parents gave me these opportunities to find out what I loved and do sports. I want to continue doing that in college.”
Wilcox, who has a 5.0 GPA on a 5.0 scale, intends to study engineering and run in college. Her top two choices are the Milwaukee School of Engineering and Rose-Hulman.
“She’s going to be so successful,” Salley said. “I can’t wait to read about her one day.”
Matt Le Cren is a freelance reporter.
