THE FRONT ROW with JASON ELLIOTT Feb. 20, 2016

Injuries are all part of playing sports.

How you respond from it, when things aren’t looking good, might be more important than wins or losses.

YOU MIGHT think that a two-year starter on a girls basketball team that had a 21-game winning streak entering Friday night might be a key piece in that puzzle, but in the case of Timberlake High senior guard Payten Rhodes, she’s just happy to be still have a chance to solve it.

Rhodes, who suffered a foot injury during a school function, wound up sidelined for a majority of the girls basketball season after surgery failed to help her ailing left foot.

As far as when she hurt it initially, it wasn’t playing basketball, running track or anything like that.

“I hurt it last year at leadership state,” the 5-foot-6 Rhodes said. “I fractured a bunch of bones at the end of my left foot and then my tendons detached. It kind of hurt, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I ran track last season and played part of the summer, then I went in and the doctors told me I needed to get it fixed, so I did.”

That was when the 8-to-10-week diagnosis put her at the start of basketball season.

“Not much has happened,” Rhodes said. “But it will heal up at some point.”

“This is only my 10th game this season,” Rhodes said after Thursday’s 58-18 win over Homedale in the state 3A girls basketball tournament in Middleton. “I had foot surgery that’s supposed to heal in November that didn’t heal until three or four weeks ago. And it’s still not completely healed, but the doctors told me that I could just go ahead and play on it and let it heal later.”

A STARTER on back-to-back second-place finishers at state, Rhodes didn’t return to the lineup this season until the Tigers played Dec. 15 at Sandpoint, a 58-50 win.

“It’s definitely a lot different than any season I’ve played before,” Rhodes said. “But it’s a lot of fun. It’s more exciting that it’s a faster pace and there’s nobody that you’ve got to worry about with the ball in their hands. You just trust everybody.”

And that comes with experience at the highest level, with Timberlake having played its eighth tournament game in three years on Friday.

“I think part of it is that we’ve been down here so much,” Rhodes said. “We’ve played a lot of games together and have been down here during the summer and we play as much as we can. We just try to be around each other as much as possible and everybody loves being around everyone else. We’ve got no problems and no drama. We’re like a big family.”

That family kept Rhodes close with the team, when for a time, she wasn’t sure she’d be on the court with them.

“Yeah, I thought about it a lot this season,” Rhodes said. “Especially when I got halfway through the season and I could barely walk on it. I thought maybe this was the end of it, and I was OK with that. With this team, they made me feel a part of it, so it wasn’t as big of a letdown. I still did everything with them but play.”

Timberlake coach Matt Miller did everything he could to bring her along as well.

“He gave me some workouts to do like ball handling and shooting that was stationary so I could do that every day,” Rhodes said. “He would keep me engaged in practice every day and have me watching stuff and keeping me involved with practices when I wasn’t working out.”

Now healthy, or as close to it as someone can be given her injury, Rhodes just waits for her line to be called, whether that’s in the first, second or third group that rotates in during a four-minute stretch of game time.

“All of us are just interested in getting the ‘W’,” Rhodes said. “And if this is how we’re going to do it, it’s worth the sacrifice.”

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.