Pain can’t keep Hassan off volleyball court

Sometime in the next couple of weeks, Brooke Hassan will play her last volleyball game for Williamstown.

She will walk off the court the same way she usually walks on – carefully, gingerly, but most definitely on her own terms.

"The most important thing for me was to be able to play my senior year," Hassan said. "I had to play."

Hassan is a senior setter for a Williamstown team that is 27-2 after Wednesday's 2-0 (25-11, 25-17) victory over Rancocas Valley in the first round of the South section of the Group 4 state tournament.

The Braves are the No. 2 seed and could make a deep run in the tournament. They might even challenge for the program's first state title since 2006.

Still, the days are dwindling for seniors such as Hassan. She knows she's running out of time.

But what makes Hassan so special is not that her senior season is a coming to a close. It's that it began in the first place.

"She's old-school," Williamstown coach Chris Sheppard said. "She has that mentality that you think of players having in the past, when they had a high pain threshold and there was pretty much nothing that was going to stop them from playing.

"A lot of coaches would be like, 'Wow.' I'm like that, too, but I also see an athlete who wants to play and won't let anything stop her."

Hassan was born with spinal stenosis, a narrowing of areas of the spine. She had some issues with the condition as a youngster, but was relatively healthy from around the second grade until she twisted the wrong way during a stretching exercise before her junior year in August 2009.

Since then, Hassan has been in pain.

Sometimes, she said, "it's excruciating."

Sometimes, she said, "it's just nagging."

But it never goes away.

"It's always there, but I just live through it," Hassan said. "Some days are really bad. Some days are just annoying."

Hassan has seen spinal specialists. She has been treated by chiropractors. She has a regular routine that includes icing, stretching, ibuprofen, and rest – a sensible program that would work a lot better if she didn't interrupt it by diving around on the shiny hardwood during volleyball games.

Hassan said she loves volleyball too much to stop. She loves playing for Williamstown, too, which is why she couldn't imagine not participating as a senior.

But there was some serious doubt about that as recently as early September. She had aggravated her back again during club competition in February, and stopped playing from then until the Braves opened preseason camp.

"There were times when I really didn't think she would be able to play," Sheppard said.

Hassan said that a lot of people wondered about her ability to suit up for the Braves for the last time. She was one of them.

"I kept asking myself, 'Can I do this?' " Hassan said. "I didn't know if my body would let me play. My mom [Laurie] was asking me about it, and I was like, 'Mom, it's my senior year. I have no choice.' "

Hassan has done more than suit up. She has been a top player for one of the state's top teams. She has 44 aces, 34 kills, 107 digs, and a remarkable 447 assists.

On Wednesday, Hassan had 10 assists to help her team advance to Friday's second round, to keep her unlikely senior season going for at least another two days.

"I love volleyball and I love this team," Hassan said. "It just means so much to me to be out here with my teammates."