Life gets in the way, but Dykstra keeps going

BELLINGHAM — Grant Dykstra leaves for St. Louis this morning, squeezing a new black blazer inside a suitcase full of excitement and nervous anticipation.

Tomorrow, he gets to see the NCAA semifinals at the Edward Jones Dome with his wife Tara and his parents. Monday morning, he accepts the 2005 Most Courageous award from the U.S. Basketball Writers Association at its annual breakfast.

Writers being writers, there will be the usual concerns about deadlines, tardy statistics and television influence. All that minutiae will screech to a stop when Dykstra tells his story and takes his position among a long line of players and coaches with this in common: Life got in the way.

One year, the award went to Jim Valvano, dying of cancer. Four years ago, Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton accepted on behalf of his program, which had just lost 10 members of its team and official party in a plane crash. In 2004, Marquette assistant Trey Schwab took it just weeks after a double lung-transplant to combat a deadly disease.

Dykstra and everybody around the Western Washington program are pretty much floored by the award; he's just a normal guy. In itself, that's a reflection of what he has overcome.

For the writers, here's a warning label: Finish the scrambled eggs and cantaloupe before Dykstra, a 22-year-old junior, starts his story.

He was only 2 years old on that May day back in 1984, a toddler growing up on the dairy farm of Glen and Alice Dykstra near the tiny town of Everson, 10 miles from Bellingham. Job One that day was grass-cutting in the fields, a family occasion that brought aunts, uncles and cousins.

The kids were playing on the hay in the barn when Grant sat down on a gear box. Suddenly, he felt his coat being swept into a grain augur, a piece of heavy machinery used to mix feed for cows. Think of a meat grinder.

Dykstra doesn't recall any of it, but his description is lurid enough: "It pulled me in, and in."

A cousin ran downstairs, where Alice Dykstra was milking, screaming about Grant being hurt. He didn't mention anything about the augur. Alice suppressed the urge to run upstairs, instead retreating for the grain-augur switch. She had never turned it off before.

"She felt, like an angel," says her son, describing an intervention. "The presence of God."

By the time she reached Grant, his arm had disappeared in the augur up to his shoulder, inches from his neck and head. Soon, the fields emptied and the farm tranquility was a sea of spinning emergency lights.

The paramedics were helpless. Grant's father and grandfather did the delicate work, and as well as anybody can remember, it took maybe 90 minutes to extricate the youngster.

At the hospital, doctors looked at a bouillabaisse of bones, ligaments and tendons and suggested amputation.

"My parents said, 'No, let's see what he can do first,' " Grant said.

He had one surgery after another, more than a dozen over the years. They sewed his arm temporarily to his stomach. He had skin grafts from his calves and hips.

At an early age, he developed a distrust of nurses. Summers usually meant two things: Surgery, and going to basketball camp with his right arm in a cast.

Still, he had some things going for him. The augur didn't touch his smile, which could melt an ice floe.

Meanwhile, there was both support and example from his family. Glen Dykstra was a standout on the "Six Iron Lyncs," a fabled Lynden Christian team that won the 1976 state Class A championship after several members were kicked off.

Grant's sister Shannon was part of state-title teams in both basketball and softball. His brother Greg was a two-sport standout who broke receiving records in football at Western.

"I wanted to be just like my brother and sister," Grant says. "They were the best role models. I don't ever remember not doing sports because of my arm."

It was never easy. After he had his last arm surgery in sixth grade, he broke an ankle a year later. As a high-school sophomore, he tore up a knee.

But he played, starting four years at Lynden Christian. By then, he had long since caught the eye of Brad Jackson, the Western Washington coach, who came to realize that it wasn't a factor that Dykstra's right arm was slightly shorter, and the limb had diminished flexibility and strength.

"The only thing I could remember over all those years, he was the best player," Jackson says. "It didn't matter."

Dykstra, 6 feet 4, has become a versatile player who can score, shoot, defend the perimeter and the post. And — no surprise here — he's tough.

"It would be easy for him to play that what-if game or get down," says Jackson. "I've never seen that from him. I look forward to seeing him every day. He's just a fun guy to be with.

"Truly, he's one of the better players in the country at the Division II level."

Now it's to the point where teammates pay his arm no attention and outsiders may not even notice. Well, there's the occasional punk on the opposing bench who taunts, "Nice arm, No. 1."

But he's the guy sitting on the folding chair and Dykstra is the one who has started 83 straight college games, averaged 17.1 points this season, shot 47 percent on threes and made first-team all-league and all-region.

This weekend in St. Louis, it's bound to happen: Somebody on one of the Final Four teams will talk about the adversity it overcame to get there.

Grant Dykstra should just sit back and smile that smile. He had his own personal March to the Arch.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com