Inside WSU wing Cedric Coward’s injury, recovery and his plans for the future

PULLMAN — Cedric Coward turned the corner and burst into tears. It was late November, and Washington State’s wing had just finished up a meeting with a couple of coaches and the team athletic trainer, who delivered the results of the MRI Coward had recently undergone.

In a practice a few days prior, Coward had suffered an articular cartilage tear, the results showed. Headed into the meeting, Coward figured bad news was on the way – “You kind of get a sense of like, damn, it’s probably something I don’t wanna hear,” he said – but that medical jargon didn’t mean much to Coward.

So he asked Hailey Haukeli, the Cougars’ athletic trainer, about the likelihood he could return to action later in the season. It was unlikely, Haukeli said. Coward would need surgery later on, which would reveal his exact diagnosis and timetable for recovery, but his worst fears had come to fruition: The injury was serious, and he would be out an extended amount of time.

“You think you’re strong until something like that happens,” Coward said, “and something that you absolutely love is taken away from you.”

But the main reason why Coward found himself in tears in a Bohler Gym stairwell wasn’t just because his first season at WSU had just been ripped away from him after only six games. It was because the team was about to travel for a multiteam event in Palm Desert, California, where his parents, girlfriend and grandfather were traveling from Coward’s hometown of Fresno to watch him play.

He hadn’t told any of them that he had suffered the injury, which happened during a Nov. 22 practice, when he went up for a rebound during a scrimmage and got tangled with a teammate. He heard a pop. He finished practice. But the next morning, he realized it wasn’t something he could play through.

“My arm was like dead weight,” Coward said. “So from there, I was like, alright, this is serious.”

Coward’s loved ones weren’t privy until he called and told them the results of the MRI. He first tried to call his mom, Shanel, but he was on the phone with head coach David Riley and assistant Pedro Garcia Rosado, who were passing on the news. So he dialed his dad, Ray, who was immediately able to recognize something was awry.

“He talked very slow,” Ray said. “He understood that I understood what the possible injury was, but he was very methodical in how he told me, because he knew that that would be crushing to me.”

“Cedric answered the phone via FaceTime, and he’s crying,” Shanel said. “He’s sitting in the stairwell trying to have a private conversation because he didn’t want to have his teammates looking at him. So that’s where he was emotionally. His emotional state was one that I hadn’t seen since he was a very little boy.”

As the Cougars wrap up their season, taking the No. 6 seed into the West Coast Conference Tournament to play an opponent to be determined on Saturday evening in Las Vegas, Coward’s absence has cast a shadow on the whole operation. The team’s best player, Coward had recorded four double-digit scoring outings – including a 30-point outburst – before he went down with his season-ending shoulder injury.

That has played an outsized role in the trajectory of WSU’s season, which began with a sterling 13-3 start, including 3-0 in WCC play with a key home win over San Francisco. But that’s about when things went south for the Cougs, who proceeded to lose seven of their next nine games, including two setbacks to struggling Pacific. With those results, WSU’s NCAA Tournament at-large chances evaporated.

Coward hasn’t been the only Cougar to miss time. Sophomore guard Isaiah Watts was sidelined for 10 games with a hand injury. Transfer wing Ri Vavers was on the shelf for 18 with various hand injuries. And freshman guard Marcus Wilson has been out since Nov. 15 with a season-ending shoulder injury.

But for WSU, no absence has made a bigger impact than that of Coward, who made a huge splash when he decided to follow Riley from Eastern Washington to WSU last spring. In six games, he delivered on the promise that came with his commitment, withdrawing from the NBA draft pool to showcase his all-around game, the scoring and rebounding and defense that make him the complete player he is.

Because he only played six games, Coward secured a medical redshirt, granting him one more season of college eligibility. He isn’t ruling out a return to WSU entirely, but when asked if he’s considering it as a serious possibility, he said, “Not really. I’m going with the expectation of not coming back.

“There’s a part of me that wants to come back, but most of me wants to go to my goal. That’s making the NBA,” Coward said. “I think it’s really a situation for me where I don’t expect to come back. And I think a lot of people, although they have that expectation because I am medically redshirted, should see it from a point of view of whatever is best for the individual is what’s best for them. If I get drafted, I get drafted. If I don’t, I don’t, and we’ll see what happens.”

In the first week of March, Coward doesn’t appear on many NBA mock drafts, a signal his near season-long absence has prompted his stock to drop significantly. But with his cleared-to-action date of late March approaching, he still makes for a promising pro player, which is thanks to his physical tools, natural scoring ability – and a decision to treat a career-altering injury as just another obstacle in the road.

***

Somewhere in her phone, Shanel still has a video of a groggy Coward waking up from surgery, which is when he would learn his long-term diagnosis and recovery time. Coward received his surgery on Dec. 11 in Los Angeles from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who has operated on stars from Shohei Ohtani to Kobe Bryant, and not until he opened up Coward’s shoulder would he be able to learn the true extent of his injury.

Turns out, Coward didn’t just have an articular cartilage tear. He also had a jagged rotator cuff and a partially torn labrum. That placed his injury on the severe side, and the medical staff in L.A. confirmed what WSU trainers and coaches had suspected: Coward would need to sit out the rest of the season.

As the doctors unhooked tubes from Coward’s body, they told him the news. But he was too tired to process what they were telling him. He fell back asleep. Later, when he woke up, Shanel showed him the video. As the reality hit him, he glanced at his mom.

“That means I’m out four to six months,” Coward said.

Coward wasn’t thrilled, but he wasn’t crushed, either. He had already “gotten my emotions out” when he met with WSU coaches and called his parents, he said, and Shanel recognized her son was “too loopy” to be upset right after surgery. Besides, he realized he would likely miss significant time after the surgery, regardless of the results.

Ray, a professional drummer, was traveling for work, which is why he wasn’t able to be in L.A. with Shanel and Cedric during the time of his surgery. But mom and son spent about a week in Southern California, the first couple of days preparing for his surgery and several more recovering from it.

“She always says I’m still her baby,” Coward said. “Even though I’m 6-6 and 21 years old, I’m still her baby. She did a really good job of helping me go through what I went through, helping me in whatever I needed, whether it was at 8 in the evening, 1 in the morning, she was always there, helping me take my pills, all the different stuff I needed.”

“I just wanted to ensure he was going to be OK,” Shanel said. “I know that he has people around him and things like that, but there’s no type of care that you can get better than your mom’s care. His physical was gonna be OK. I trusted the surgeon and all those that needed to be there, but his mental is what I cared more about, keeping his spirits up, making sure he stayed focused, making sure he remained focused about school and his impact to the game, even though he couldn’t play.”

Turns out, that part was the one Shanel needed to worry about least. Before his surgery, Cedric called Ray to update him on what was going on, telling him he was headed in for his operation. He sounded calm, Ray remembers, like nothing was amiss.

To some, that might have come as a surprise. Not to Ray.

“Nah,” Ray said. “That’s how he was raised.”

***

Even before his surgery, Coward was making progress on his recovery. He was beginning to come to terms with his new reality, that he would miss significant time, that he would need to become a de facto coach, seeing the game from a new perspective and offering his teammates encouragement in practice and another set of eyes in games.

That, Coward admits, was no easy process. “It wasn’t easy at all. No chance,” Coward said.

Coward had to look in the mirror. There was no changing his circumstances. Not everyone would feel sorry for him. He appreciated the well wishes he received, but there was no DeLorean to hop into to travel back in time and stop him from getting hurt in practice. The injury happened.

That helped him move on to his next train of thought. He needed to be present with his WSU team, needed to be around his teammates.

“If I’m over here sitting in sorrow every day and feeling bad for myself, the guys are gonna see that,” Coward said. “I’m still a captain. I’m still a leader of this team, even though I’m not playing. That still shows. So you have to have a positive attitude, knowing, hey man, just because I’m going through this doesn’t mean I’m focused solely on myself, because that’s not what I’m about.”

It raises what seems like a fair question: Why is it so important to Coward to stay involved with the team, especially with the next chapter of his life around the corner?

“Because I would want the same thing for me if somebody else was hurt,” Coward said. “I think it’s a big thing to use your voice and to show action. Especially now that I can’t necessarily show the action on the court anymore, it’s a big thing for me to still use my voice, because if I’m at the end of the bench silent and not doing nothing, I don’t think that benefits anybody.

“It doesn’t benefit the team and doesn’t benefit me, because now I’m seen as this leader or this captain, but at the same time, I’m the quietest guy. That’s not how I roll. It’s honestly for me a way to keep myself sane and stay within the game. Just being able to talk to guys about stuff I see, stuff that can maybe help them, give them suggestions, ask them what they see, and then figure out a way to solve it.”

Coward hasn’t solved all the problems for the Cougars, who ended the regular season on a two-game winning streak, heading into Saturday’s tournament game with some momentum. But he’s putting himself in a position to solve his own problems on the court. The more he sees his injury as just another obstacle, he’s realizing, the less of one it seems like in the first place.