The bar continues to rise in the high jump competition – 4 feet 10, 5 feet even, 5-2, – and the field at the High Desert Challenge continues to narrow.

This is about where Emily Laing should be taking command, racing toward the bar with her 6-foot frame and gliding up and gracefully over, tumbling into the landing pit, crossbar untouched.

But the senior at Bend’s Summit High School is on the sideline now on this windy afternoon in Redmond, having missed all three of her attempts at 4-10. She’s sitting back on the outer edge of the apron, watching others run and leap while she holds a bag of ice snug to her left knee.

She smiles. If her tender hinge is hurting, it doesn’t show. More likely, it’s her heart that’s aching.

—–

Laing can tell you in great detail about her bum knee. She can recount with crystal clarity the late-season basketball game during her junior year – Feb. 16, 2004, at Bend High – when she went up for a rebound and came down in a routine jump stop.

”But my knee went one direction,” she remembers, ”and the rest of me went another.”

The ensuing operation to repair her dislocated kneecap and fractured tibia involved removing chunks of loose cartilage, reattaching an inner-thigh muscle that had torn away from the knee, and tightening tendons to stabilize the reconstructed joint.

She missed the entire track season, which was almost more than she could bear.

”I went to as many meets as I could, to be there for my teammates,” she recalls. ”But I went through a stage where it would just break my heart to watch other people jump. So I didn’t go to many practices.”

Her recovery went smoothly. Doctors and therapists had told her she wouldn’t be able to run for six months, but she was back in four. Not only was she running, she was working hard in the weight room. And, to help stay in shape for her anticipated return to track, she was playing some casual tennis.

In mid-October, while playing during a tennis clinic at Bend Golf and Country Club, she heard – and felt – a ”pop” in her left knee.

No way, she thought. It couldn’t be.

”This wasn’t as bad,” Laing remembers thinking. ”My knee swelled up immediately, but I was still able to walk.”

Her optimism was shot down, though, by an MRI and the sad nod of her doctor’s head.

”He basically told me,” says Laing, ”that I’d done the same thing all over again.”

—–

While waiting for her return to the operating table, Laing endured what she calls ”an angry time.”

”I thought they’d fixed everything,” she says. ”But now they had to redo everything, pretty much.”

Her disappointment was considerable. But she would not be disheartened. Giving up on her hopes and dreams – to return to the track team, to jump again, to improve on her official personal best of 5-2, to compete one day at the college level – never crossed her mind.

”What DID go through my mind was: November, December, January, February,” she says, counting off the months on her fingers. ”Four months, and I’m gonna be back for track.”

It was an especially bold prediction considering that while she was undergoing the second knee surgery, on Oct. 29, doctors also operated to tighten tendons in her left ankle, which she had sprained four times during her sophomore basketball season.

”I was really a mess,” she reflects.

But even then, no one – not doctors or rehab specialists or family or friends or teammates or coaches – suggested to Laing that perhaps she should give up her comeback bid.

”I didn’t really give them the option,” she says, ”of telling me I couldn’t.”

—–

Laing’s coach at Summit, Dave Turnbull, remembers when Laing and Gina Fuqua, seventh-grade classmates at Cascade Middle School and current Summit teammates, would come to Mountain View High – where Turnbull was coaching at the time – to work with him on high jumping.

”Emily was amazing – even then,” says Turnbull.

And her progress was rapid.

”I have a picture of her (taken at the IMC district meet of her sophomore year) where she’s over 5-3 by like four inches with her back,” the coach says. Laing actually clipped the bar with her heels on that jump, Turnbull notes, so she didn’t officially clear the height. But the photo proved that the kid had a future in the high jump.

(For perspective, 5-2 won the Intermountain Conference high jump title last season. The winning mark at the 2004 Class 4A state meet was 5-3.)

This was a girl who, Turnbull believes, was headed for great heights – like 5-7, or even 5-10.

If not for the injuries, says teammate Fuqua, Laing ”would be No. 1 on our team now, for sure.”

”She was one of the best prospects in Oregon,” says Turnbull. ”And really, she still is. I know she’s got the capability.”

Laing says she always wanted to be a state champion. She envisioned going on to compete in track at a major university.

”She’s tall, and she has a lot of strength,” says Turnbull. ”We have tests we do, and her hamstrings are as strong as some of our football players’. She definitely would’ve been a Division I (college) candidate.”

But her aspirations are a little different now. She’s planning to enroll and high jump at Trinity University, a small NCAA Division III school in San Antonio, in her native Texas. She’ll attend Trinity with a financial aid package earned in part by her 3.9 grade-point average and the honors diploma she will receive upon graduation from Summit High next month.

As for her remaining goals as a high school jumper, there’s no denying that the bar has literally been lowered.

But that same bar is now steadily on the rise.

—–

”When I started training back in February, I couldn’t even go 4 feet,” Laing notes. ”I’m getting better.”

Improvement has been gradual, in part because swelling in the damaged knee – the knee on her plant, or takeoff, leg – won’t allow her to jump even two days in a row. She is not allowed to run as part of her training, so she works out on a stationary bike. She wears a brace to help stabilize her kneecap, takes medication to minimize pain and swelling, and keeps regular company with an ice bag.

”It’s hard to put yourself in her position,” says Fuqua. ”What would I do? I honestly can’t say. But Emily’s been an inspiration to everyone on my team. She has really strong faith, and she’s making the best of what God has given her.”

Laing says the unfailing support of her parents, Barry and Gale Laing, and that of her teammates and coaches, has been crucial along the comeback trail. Turnbull says he has hoped for Laing’s safe and successful return, and that he hasn’t tried to persuade her – only to encourage her.

As for whether Laing’s comeback is in the best interest of her physical well-being: ”We let the doctors make that call,” says Turnbull. ”They’re the experts.”

But the coach isn’t the least bit surprised that Laing is back out with the team.

”She just loves high jumping too much,” he says. ”She’s such a fan of the event. And she’s such a stellar kid … I don’t think I could ever say no to someone like that, whatever they wanted to do.”

—–

What Laing wants to do this week is make a difference for her team. She has cleared 4-10 three times in meets so far this spring, and while that height isn’t likely to get her to state (the top two district placers advance, and the automatic state qualifying height is 5-3), she might well be in a position to score some key points as the Storm girls look to contend for the IMC team championship this Friday and Saturday in Hermiston.

”I think she could still go 5 feet at district,” says Turnbull. ”She’s a gamer; she does her best in big meets. And she knows our team needs her. It’s not like we’re taking her along as some kind of charity. We absolutely need her.”

The feeling is mutual, it seems.

”It just feels so good to be part of a team,” says Laing. ”Our team is so incredible, there’s so much chemistry. I feel a lot of pride knowing I’m part of such a talented team.

”But most of all,” she adds, ”it’s good to be back.”

Turnbull considers Laing Exhibit A in the case for high school athletics.

”Sports like track and field teach life lessons,” says the coach. ”You’re going to hit some bumps in the road – sometimes big ones. To do it twice, and overcome it like Emily has … nobody can ever question her desire, or her determination to do whatever she wants to do.”