Nearly five months before playing in his first game of the 2023-24 season, senior Levi Perkins didn’t know if he’d put on a Seaforth jersey again.
In late July, Perkins slid down a two-piece inflatable water slide at his little brother’s birthday party, but a small girl stood in his path at the bottom. While attempting to stop, Perkins’ feet slid into the gap between the two slide pieces while his body continued to move forward.
“I first thought I’d broken my leg,” Perkins said. “Then we went to the ER. They took X-rays, no broken bones or anything like that. I went to get an MRI the next day, and that’s when I found out I had three torn ligaments in each knee.”
Usually, an injury like that is a season-ender, but Perkins beat the odds by checking into Seaforth’s game at Hillside on Dec. 20. Having to go through a grueling recovery process, his determination to return to the court earned him the honor of being named a top five finalist for the Jersey Mike’s Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award on Feb. 9.
The award recognizes a high school basketball player who has “consistently gone above and beyond throughout the basketball season and has demonstrated courage in their approach to their team, school and community,” as stated in a press release. The Atlanta Tipoff Club, which administers the Naismith Awards, will announce a female and male winner on March 6.
Being recognized nationally for his triumph, Perkins wants others recovering from significant injuries to know that achieving one’s goals is all in the head.
“You’re going to get just as much out of something as what you put into it,” Perkins said. “The mental challenge is what’s going to really wear you down and make things the most difficult. I remember I had so many mental blocks along the way, thinking I can’t do this (and) I can’t do that…When you start telling yourself you can do that, you can do this, you can jump, you can play defense, things will get a lot better.”
Right after the injury, doctors initially told Perkins that it would take one and a half to two years to return to basketball.
“I didn’t really know what to think,” Perkins said. “I was kind of just at loss mentally, emotionally (and) physically, too.”
For Perkins, the first few weeks following his surgery on Aug. 11 were the hardest part of the journey — not only because his mobility was so limited that he had to use a wheelchair and a handicap accessible van, but also because his senior year was in jeopardy.
“His motivation was to be back out here because he and three other seniors on the team have played together since they were at Moncure,” Lindsay Perkins, Perkins’ mother, said. “Even before Moncure’s middle (school) team…They played together since they were like 7. I mean, a decade of playing together, your senior year is everything.”
Thanks to the discovery of a modern ACL recovery regimen, Perkins’ senior campaign became a possibility.
While doing physical therapy twice a week at Duke Sport Sciences Institute, Perkins needed to continue his recovery outside of that in order to return in time. He and his family looked online for more options and found Accelerate ACL, a company that has served high-profile athletes, such as New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley, with electrical stimulation therapy.
The direct current helped stimulate the muscles around the ligaments so that the muscles could absorb more of the force from movement. The treatment also helped manage pain so that Perkins could push harder to regain his range of motion.
“As far as my protocol and working my knees to get range of motion, it was all around the clock,” Perkins said. “Every hour…From the moment I woke up until I went to bed, I was stretching, trying to work my muscles (and) getting some quad sets in. Then once I started walking, that’s when things got a lot better.”
Perkins continued to progress and eventually started running for the first time in late September.
“Once I started running, I was like maybe there’s a chance I could do something this year,” Perkins said. “Even Coach Brunelli let me shoot free throws in practice from the moment I was able to get on my feet. So just doing that, that felt nice.”
Running turned into lateral movements, and by mid to late October, Perkins picked up his training intensity, working out twice a day.
On Dec 15., Perkins’ surgeon cleared him to play, giving him more than half of a season to close out his high school career.
“The next day I went to practice, and now it’s like there’s no way this is real,” Perkins said. “I went out there and knocked down some shots. All the guys were happy to see me on the court. They were giving me the ball. It was just a great experience.”
Perkins’ determination paid off in Seaforth’s next game against Hillside just five days later, in which he once again put on a Seaforth jersey and was officially available for the first time all year.
With the Hawks down big late in the fourth quarter, Perkins grabbed a defensive rebound and advanced the ball to senior Will Little who got fouled shortly after passing half court. On the ensuing inbound play, Perkins ran the baseline to the right corner where sophomore Declan Lindquist found him behind the three-point line.
Perkins caught the pass, set his feet, and with a defender’s hand in his face, splashed his first shot attempt of the season.
“That was probably the most memorable moment of my whole recovery journey,” Perkins said.