Lakeland High senior Kaidan Kelsey was trying to clear a hurdle on March 28, 2013, at Post Falls High, during the Christina Finney Co-ed Relays, while competing in the 100-meter high hurdles.

Kelsey, then a 16-year-old sophomore, tripped over it and what happened was a scary accident that affects the now 18-year-old to this day.

How the three-sport athlete was able to recover in eight months and then be able to play in Saturday's 12th annual Idaho high school all-state girls basketball game at 1 p.m. at Christianson Gymnasium at North Idaho College is pretty inspirational. She was also named to the West team on Thursday in the District 1 All-Star Game at the Mullan Pavilion.

TWO YEARS ago, the 6-foot Kelsey was trying to clear the edge of the hurdle, when her toe caught the edge of it. Everything was pretty much a blur from that point on, as Kelsey suffered a skull fracture and a traumatic brain injury.

"What I've been told is my toe caught on the first hurdle and then I stumbled," Kelsey said. "But I kept going and I completely caught my toe on the second hurdle and among hurdles, one has a 90-degree corner and the other one has a curved edge, so they fall easier. These hurdles were the 90-degrees and it didn't fall with me, I got tangled in it and I hit the left side of my forehead on the track and I had a seizure right there on the track."

Kaidan's mother, Shari, watched the horror of her youngest daughter's injury and was in the ambulance on the way from Post Falls to Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene, where Shari has worked as a nurse for the past 27 years.

"Obviously, it was very traumatic at the time it happened," Shari said. "It was nothing we've ever experienced before with my other three kids having played sports. I didn't know how it was going to play out."

Lakeland coach Lee Libera said Kelsey's crash was pretty terrifying.

"That was about as bad a crash as I've seen in track in 30-some years of coaching," Libera said. "I don't think she hit the hurdle necessarily, she had the hurdle cleared and she came down on her ankle and it kind of gave out and the next thing you know, it hit the side of her head. It was not pretty - it was definitely one of those things that you hate to see - but she's come back strong. She seems to be doing fine; she's one of the better athletes we have in the school. I'm not planning on having her hurdle the rest of her high school career but she's been a pretty good jumper."

KELSEY HAD some serious bleeding and spent a week in the hospital following the mishap.

"When I got to the hospital, I had subdural (hematoma) and subarachnoid (hemorrhage) bleeding," Kaidan said.

According to webmd.com, subdural hematoma is a collection of blood outside the brain and a subarachnoid hemorrhage is the bursting of a blood vessel in the brain.

"I had a fracture in my left temple bone. If any more blood showed up, then I would've had to have surgery to relieve the pressure. Thank goodness it started to disappear instead of more (blood) coming."

Shari noticed a few things about her daughter soon after she was released from the hospital.

"She's a very driven student, so she went back to school a week later," Shari said. "She had memory deficits, peripheral vision deficits. It was hard for her."

Kaidan said she still gets headaches that arise on average of two or three times per week and up until August of 2013, she had headaches nearly every single day.

THE LONG road to full recovery started for Kaidan a few weeks later.

"I did a combination of speech and physical therapy," Kaidan said. "I was in a pool that was 10 feet deep. I had to memorize 10 words before going underwater, I did 10 somersaults and I had to say the 10 words back to them (the therapists)."

Kaidan took eight months to recover and after missing the first two games of the Hawks' basketball season as a junior, a different-looking Kelsey appeared in a nonleague loss Nov. 22 at Lewiston. She played in every basketball game from that point on, always with a certain different look on her head.

"Her physician allowed her to play basketball, with the stipulation that she wear protective headgear," Shari said. "She has this giant black headband that she wears. It's not going to keep an injury from happening but it's likely that it would decrease the severity. It absorbs some of the impact, not all of the impact. It's called full-90 headgear and it's something that soccer teams are going toward using to protect their kids from headers and goal posts. It's a padded piece of headgear that doesn't cover the top of her head, it protects her front and back of her head. With the severity of the injury, they can't predict what would happen if she were to again have a head injury. They say she could have symptoms that would never resolve."

Two games later, on Nov. 26, Kelsey played in her first home game of that season, a 46-39 nonleague win over St. Maries.

"Everybody knew about it; they were excited," Kaidan said. "It drove me nuts not to play sports. My first two games, I was terrified, I was awkward, I was scared to go as hard as I could."

Fast forward to today and Kelsey, who is just one semester short of earning her associates' degree after taking dual-enrollment courses at NIC, is looking forward to playing in Saturday's all-star game.

"I'm really excited about playing in the game," Kelsey said. "I've always played against the girls that'll be playing, now I'm excited to be playing with them."

Kelsey, who averaged 10 points and nine rebounds per game to lead Lakeland this past season, has a lot of good memories playing volleyball and basketball, and competing in track and field.

"We didn't win as many games as we would've liked," Kelsey said. "But we still played well as a team."

Lakeland girls basketball coach Steve Seymour, a teacher at the school who has observed Kelsey being involved in things like a lip sync competition as part of the Prairie Pig basketball games and as his teacher's assistant, has enjoyed having Kelsey on the team. She's also the president of the school's National Honors Society, the Associated Student Body secretary, plus she's been on the student council during her entire time at Lakeland.

"She's a great team leader," Seymour said. "To come back from adversity from a severe head injury, we didn't know what to expect. I think it's great for a kid to come back from so much. She's so involved with her school. Whatever's going on at Lakeland High School, there's a chance she's involved in it."

As for track and field, competing in the high jump, long jump and discus, Kelsey is aiming toward going back to the state meet, set for May 15-16 at Dona Larsen Park in Boise. Last year, she qualified in the high jump and finished ninth.

It might be unwise to count Kelsey out for a state medal from this driven girl who's already proven she can bounce right back up.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013 or via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com