Her career was practically finished, not once, but twice.
It was the fall of 1996, just days before Carrie Kirvin's junior basketball season at the University of Vermont, and the Clifton Park native thought she was poised for a breakthrough year.
She was 20 years old, perfectly healthy and seemingly in her basketball prime. Yet there she was, suffering from a collapsed lung and worse yet, nobody could explain anything. Why? When? If? Nothing.
``We never expected her to play again,'' her father, Bill Kirvin, said.
But she did return, somehow missing only the first five games. From there, everything was going relatively well; Kirvin had lost her starting job and came off the bench for 20 games, but was shooting the ball as well as she ever did and appeared not to be missing a beat.
Until March, when inexplicable lightning struck once more. There were only four games remaining in the season and her lung collapsed again.
Kirvin's junior season was over; her career, once again, was in jeopardy.
``I think the first time I was just kind of shocked,'' she said. ``No one really knew what was going on. I took my time getting back and played pretty well, although I was a little frustrated with my playing time (which dipped to a career-low 19.5 minutes per game).
``Then it happened again,'' she continued, ``and I knew I had to get refocused.''
Doctors gave her a clean bill of health, although there still was no answers to the ``Why?'' question. And Kirvin, one season left in her college career, returned to Burlington, Vt. without lofty expectations.
``I wasn't going to be as emotionally involved as I once was,'' Kirvin said. ``You've got to take things to heart, but when you have a second chance you look at everything in a different sense.''
Realistically, Kirvin had one goal for her senior season -- staying healthy. And she did, starting all 29 of Vermont's games, posting career-high totals in assists and minutes played along the way.
``I was really happy with my play this year,'' Kirvin said.
Kirvin averaged 7.7 points per game this season, while compiling more than three assists and three rebounds per game. Those numbers are hardly attention-grabbing, but when first-year Vermont coach Keith Cieplicki opted to move Kirvin from the shooting guard slot to the point guard position, it made Kirvin more of an on-court field boss than a stat-collecting scorer.
It's nearly unimaginable for a senior basketball player at a Division I college to give up the chance to bask in a leading scorer's limelight. Kirvin did so without so much as a second thought.
``It was a very hard adjustment at first, since I hadn't played (point guard) since I was a sophomore in high school,'' Kirvin said. ``Coach Cieplicki got on me, basically because he knew I could handle it -- and I'm glad he did. It was a hard switch at first but in the end I kind of liked it.''
``We couldn't have asked her to do any more,'' Vermont assistant coach Jen Niebling said. ``She had a super-positive attitude about it.''
The results were good for both Kirvin and the rest of her Catamount teammates. Vermont finished the season with a 22-7 record, coming within one point of qualifying for the NCAA Tournament for the first time in Kirvin's four years there. The Catamounts lost the America East conference championship game to Maine 81-80, giving the Black Bears the automatic bid to the NCAAs and ending Vermont's season.
Obviously, that's a bit of a sore point for Kirvin and the rest of her team. Vermont finished the season ranked 51st nationally in the Ratings Percentage Index, a tool the NCAA uses to help select its at-large teams for the 64-team tournament. But there was no postseason offer for Vermont, a team that only trailed defending national champion Tennessee by six points in the second half early in the season.
``We realized that getting an NCAA bid was pretty slim,'' Niebling said. ``I think not getting an NIT bid was even harder for us.''
``It was really upsetting,'' Kirvin said of the loss to Maine. ``In the beginning we took a few bumps having a new coach and all, but we were playing really well. I never thought we weren't going to win that game. I thought this year was the best chance we had and I thought we played together so well.''
But Maine escaped with the win, and instead earned a first-round matchup with North Carolina State. Maine lost that game -- and N.C. State advanced all the way to this weekend's Final Four.
``That kind of makes you wonder what could have happened,'' Kirvin said.
Instead, now Kirvin is left to ponder what will happen next. Her role with Vermont women's basketball isn't officially finished; after graduation in May, the team is slated to go play in Italy for 10 days.
She has many opportunities for post-graduate internships and even the chance to play professionally overseas, but she's also looking at beginning a coaching career.
``I think I would like to try and see if I could become a coach,'' said Kirvin, a sports administration major at UVM. ``It would be nice to take basketball to a new level.''
