Physically, the injury that kept Alaina Coates from making her professional debut for months wasn’t catastrophic — she knew she would play again.
But mentally, the ankle injury that kept Coates out of South Carolina women’s basketball’s 2017 national championship run was difficult, to say the least.
“I was really just keeping in the back of my mind that this injury is not career-ending, it’s not going to hold me back forever, so in order to maintain a positive mindset, I definitely wanted to make sure that I stayed positive,” Coates told The State in an interview.