Ending on Her Terms - Lauren Orndoff

ENDING ON Her

TERMS

By Stayson Isobe

Inactive and on the bench last season, there were no guarantees that Lauren Orndoff would ever don the Lumberjack uniform again. Then she remembered six key words of advice.

“One of my good friends gave me advice of ‘don’t stop playing until you can’t,’” Orndoff said. “For everything I’ve been through here, I owed it to myself to keep playing and to end on the terms I want.”

There were no guarantees that Orndoff would have already made a return once. Not after the road to recovery she had already traveled down, battling back from her self-described lowest point.

So “don’t stop playing until you can’t” lived in her mind, and Orndoff will in fact give it one final go-around.

A year ago, every student-athlete across the country had to decide if competing during the COVID-19 pandemic was the right choice for them. However, with the uncertainty surrounding the 2020-21 season and how it would be affected by the pandemic, the risk was not worth it for Orndoff.

“It was a decision I had to make for myself.” Orndoff said. “It was hard because I wanted to play and I’m sure everyone can relate to wanting things to be normal. It simply wasn’t though and I couldn’t change that. It was hard at the time because there weren’t a lot of protocols in place yet, there wasn’t a plan for vaccines and for what the season would look like so I felt I didn’t have enough information to make the decision to play.”

To fully understand Orndoff’s decision is to know what she’s been through.

Midway through her sophomore season, Orndoff, now entering her fifth year as a member of the Northern Arizona women’s basketball program, experienced spontaneous pneumothorax, which caused her lung to collapse. Given the respiratory effects of COVID-19, Orndoff’s decision was the smart one, as difficult as it was.

However, as difficult as that decision was, it pales in comparison to her journey back to the court in the first place.

Orndoff’s career could look a lot different right now. The potential was there. Sitting at 580 career points prior to the start of the 2021-22 season, Orndoff could

have easily crossed the illustrious 1,000 point threshold already.

Coming to NAU after a stellar prep career at South Medford High School in Oregon, Orndoff started 20 games as a true freshman. Orndoff flashed that potential early, including in a 16-point performance in NAU’s historic victory over Arizona that year. But it wasn’t until her second year that Orndoff really took off, until she was derailed.

In warmups prior to the Lumberjacks’ home game against Southern Utah on Jan. 12, 2019, Orndoff experienced chest pains that she initially dismissed as something as simple as heart burn. Despite the discomfort, Orndoff fought through it playing 22 minutes in the overtime loss, only for an x-ray to reveal her collapsed lung.

“It was really frustrating because my freshman year was a lot of learning experiences, getting used to the flow of the game, the speed and physicality of college basketball and that sophomore year I gained a lot of confidence and understood the game better,” Orndoff said. “It felt like it was going to be a breakout season for me so it was disheartening that this thing that was out of my control was happening.”

Not to be lost in the bigger picture, Orndoff was in the midst of the best stretch of her career, averaging 15.3 points while hitting 21-of41 from the field and connecting on 8-of-16 behind the arc in the four games prior to that Southern Utah contest. A breakout seemed imminent, only for an unexpected detour.

What followed was the long recovery back. Orndoff withdrew from school and went through a couple of procedures uncommon for her age group, let alone her specific demographic as a healthy female student-athlete. She was stuck in the ICU, and then was confined to her home. There was getting back to walking, then progressing to jogging and eventually running. Weightlifting was restricted to body weight, and that was before Orndoff ever thought about dribbling a basketball again.

“The hardest part was seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Orndoff said. “I had withdrawn from school and I wasn’t playing basketball. Things that were part of my regular routine were no longer there and things that I liked to do outside of school and basketball were no longer there as well. Basketball was out of the picture during that entire process and as much as it broke my heart, I wanted to get my health back and we started with baby steps.”

Once the baby steps were cleared, Orndoff was given the green light to return to basketball activities at a pace that she was comfortable with. What followed was a return that was nothing short of triumphant.

In her first game back, she netted 14 points on the road at New Mexico in the 2019-20 opener. She followed that with a then career-high 20 points on 7-of-8 shooting in a win against Seattle. The Medford, Ore. native would go on to start all 31 games for the Lumberjacks that year, averaging 9.0 points per game during NAU’s first winning season in 13 years.

“I like to call her our silent assassin,” said head coach Loree Payne. “She can very quietly put up 20 on any given night. The challenges that she’s faced over the last two years has put her in a position where leadership-wise she’s grown. It’s helped her maintain a neutral mindset and not get too high or too low. She suits up and goes to work.”

As strong as her season started, Orndoff’s finish was just as impressive as she averaged 15.5 points per game at the 2020 conference tournament to close her junior season. She appeared poised for an even bigger senior season, that would also include high aspirations for the Lumberjacks as a whole coming off an appearance in the Big Sky semifinals.

But as it would turn out, the Lumberjacks’ semifinal loss to top-seeded Montana State on March 11, 2020 was the last bit of normalcy before the pandemic shut everything down. The very next day, the Big Sky Conference, like so many other leagues, canceled the remainder of their tournaments. The next time anyone stepped out on the court, cardboard cutouts and masks were present everywhere you looked.

Following her decision to sit out the season, Orndoff was an observer during NAU’s second consecutive winning campaign, ending with a postseason berth in the WBI. Through it all, Orndoff contemplated her future as she was set to graduate last spring with her bachelor’s degree in psychology.

“She’s continued to battle every day despite the things that have been out of her control. She is so tough. I admire her a ton and I feel very fortunate to be able to coach her in her last year.” - Loree Payne

But here she is, playing the sport because she still can and this is where Orndoff’s story picks up. It’s yet another return to play and more importantly, another chance to end her career the way she wants to.

“I just want to enjoy it,” Orndoff said. “It would be great to have a winning season and to win a Big Sky Championship. Obviously that’s the goal every day at practice. But in regards to everything here with school and my friends and basketball, I want to embrace it all and be present with people I’m interacting with because that’s how I’ll get the most out of it.”

“She could’ve ended last year, graduated and carried on with her life, but this program meant a lot to her and she wanted to finish strong,” Payne added. “She’s continued to battle every day despite the things that have been out of her control. She is so tough. I admire her a ton and I feel very fortunate to be able to coach her in her last year.”

In addition to preparing for her final season as a Lumberjack, Orndoff is currently working towards her master’s degree in communication as well as interning with NAU Athletics’ Marketing and Fan Engagement team.

Her journey has been anything but ideal, but Orndoff is grateful for it all.

“I’m thankful that it happened because it gave me a lot of new perspective on things outside of basketball and made me realize that life is a lot bigger than the game of basketball,” Orndoff said. “I’ve been at my lowest point and I can only go up. I’m really thankful to be here and I’m super grateful for the coaching staff, my teammates and my trainers. Honestly, my entire journey wasn’t near what I expected it to be, but I honestly wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s been some of the greatest four or five years of my life.”