from Mark Berman with The Roanoke Times, and CLICK HERE to read more and to Read All….
BLACKSBURG — Last month was not a good one for Elizabeth Kitley, as evidenced by the crutches she now uses.
But the Virginia Tech star has reason to smile these days.
The WNBA Draft will be held Monday. And despite having torn the ACL in her left knee, Kitley is expected to be selected.
“My No. 1 emotion is just excitement for something new,” Kitley said in an interview Friday, with her left leg propped up on a desk. “I’ve been here for five years and I love it and I’d probably stay if I could, but it’s still going to be exciting to meet new people and be in a new environment.
“Wherever I end up, it’s going to take a lot of hard work to get back to where I was. But that’s my current challenge. And whatever my current challenge is, I’m going to attack as hard as I can.”
The draft gives the graduate student something positive to look forward to.
“It’s making me excited about the future,” Kitley said.
But in the wake of her ACL surgery, she won’t be able to play in the WNBA until next year — a fact that quickly occurred to her when she got hurt.
“That was one of my first thoughts as soon as I got hurt because I knew what had happened right away,” she said. “I just knew that the next year was going to look a lot different than I thought it would.
“But that’s also just kind of how it goes with the sport. … Injuries are just part of it and I think I’ve been pretty lucky throughout my five years to not be riddled with too many. But it just so happened in March of my final year that I get a pretty serious one.
“But what are you going to do besides put your head down and focus on getting better?”
CLICK HERE to read MORE and to read all from Mark Berman, with The Roanoke Times….