In November, right before Fall Break, ISU forward Madison Baier fell to the hardwood during basketball practice.

Her knee was in pain. She feared the worse.

Baier, a senior, thought it was a torn ACL, which brought with it a grim forecast for the rest of her ISU career.

That’s what the rest of the team thought, too. ISU coach Bill Fennelly told the media in early December that Baier wasn’t coming back for the rest of the season. He was even talking about suiting her up in the last game of the season as a courtesy.

But that thought never crossed Baier’s mind. When she found out the injury wasn’t as serious as the team originally thought, she sent out a text to her entire team.

“I’m not done yet,” it read.

Now, just a couple of months removed from her injury, Baier is back on the court, albeit with limited minutes. Her knee is in a brace, but, mentally, she is ready to go. 

“It feels good to be back,” Baier said. “For a while, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to come back. But after Doc Greenwald looked at everything, and I did my therapy, I knew that I was going to be back. I just had to brace it.”

Baier has been no stranger to injuries in her career. Her injury list looks similar to a laundry list: a foot injury in high school, ankle injuries in her freshman year, a torn ACL and lateral collateral ligament in her sophomore year and a knee injury this season.

“My junior year, I was healthy — thank God,” Baier joked.

But most of the time, it wasn’t a joke to Baier. The rigorous rehab to get back to full strength and back on the court sometimes left her dejected. 

Like some athletes who go through injuries every season, she thought about just giving up. The constant work to recover started to take a toll on her.

“I can kind of relate to that,” Baier said. “There’s sometimes when I thought, ‘I’m done. I’m not coming back. Why do I even try?’”

Baier entered her senior season hoping to remain healthy and get the most out of her final season as a Cyclone. She hadn’t played much before this season, participating in 47 games, but starting none. She averaged 3.8 minutes in 26 games in her junior season, which was her healthiest season at Iowa State.

But her contribution at Iowa State goes beyond her numbers on the paper, members of the team have constantly said.

“She’s not going to be an All-Big 12 player when we recruited her, we knew that, but she’s a great teammate,” Fennelly said. “She’s just one of those kids that maybe hasn’t impacted our program on game night, but when you look over a four-year career, the impact she’s made is pretty dramatic.”

Her hopes for a healthy senior season were dashed when she fell in practice.

“It’s really, really frustrating,” Baier said. “When I went down in practice, I think I was more mad than frustrated.”

But even from the beginning, Baier had a core support system around her to try and get her another chance on the court.

Her teammates rallied around her, finding inspiration in her constant attempts to battle injuries, and her mom sent her a stream of text messages to give her encouragement.

“I can’t remember, but she likes to send me like Rocky Balboa things, so she would send me stuff like, ‘Eye of the Tiger,’ just telling me stuff like to always work hard no matter what,” Baier said about her mom’s encouragement. “Work hard at practice, work hard at therapy.”

Baier worked in the pool and did off-the-court workouts to get her knee back into tip-top shape. All of the work paid off about a week ago, when Baier and the team doctors approached Fennelly to ask him if she could come back.

It was a shock to Fennelly, who didn’t expect her back quite so soon.

“When you have those moments — she talked to the doctors …, they came to me, and I was stunned,” Fennelly said. “She wanted to try it. I said, ‘Sure, let’s go.’”

Baier was cleared Wednesday to play her first game since her injury in November. The team traveled to Stillwater, Okla., to take on Oklahoma State and was coming off an overtime loss to Texas Tech the previous Sunday.

As she took the court with her teammates, donning her cardinal and gold jersey for the first time in two months, the nerves set in.

“I was kind of anxious to go in,” Baier said. “I was ready to get on the court. I was kind of nervous.”

Baier eventually got into the game, playing five minutes and registering an offensive rebound and two fouls. It was a low amount of time on the court, but it didn’t matter to her.

Her road back to getting on the court hasn’t just given Baier her last shot as a member of Iowa State, it has also inspired some of her ISU teammates.

“It’s very inspiring,” said teammate Emily Durr. “When you have a bad practice, and you’re kind of down and out, but you see her going through injuries time and time again. It’s definitely awe-inspiring.”