The Webster Women’s Basketball team has started the 2023 season with nine straight wins. It is still early days but given their impeccable record, which includes two convincing victories over the SLIAC’s runners-up from the past two seasons, Westminster College, the Gorloks appear to be on course to winning their third straight conference title.
The performance of senior guard Jordyn Grimes has played a crucial part in her team’s success. While she is the fourth-highest scorer on the team, averaging 8 points per game, her defensive role is what makes her stand out. Grimes leads the team in steals (30) and ranks fourth in the conference for steals per game. But with hard defense, one can seldom avoid the battle scars.
Grimes enjoyed injury-free freshman and sophomore years at Webster, but her junior year was an injury crisis. So much so that Grimes said she feels like she lost a year of playing basketball.
It all began during an August pre-season practice when Grimes went down hard and hit her head on the floor.
“That’s when the concussion protocols started,” Grimes said. “I had to take the concussion test and never in my life have I done well in that test. Literally, never.”
It took two weeks, five failed tests and consultations with two concussion specialists before she was approved to return to play.
Then, in the Webster tip-off classic, a tournament hosted by Webster on the first weekend of every season, Grimes hurt her right ankle.
Fortunately for her, the team’s next game, against Mississippi University for Women, was canceled and she was back in time to play Augustana College two weeks later.
In the next sixteen games, Grimes established herself as the starting point guard. She averaged 21 minutes per game during this time.
“I was fine. I was healthy for a while. (I) thought I had gotten past the curb of injuries.”
But things turned for the worse during the tail-end of the regular season.
“It was Jan. 31, I remember the day specifically,” Grimes said. “We were getting ready to play Greenville the next day.”
Having lost to Greenville earlier in the season, Grimes and her team were longing for redemption. However, a teammate fell on Grimes’ ankle in practice that day and Grimes found herself sidelined.
“Yeah, it was rough…That’s when it started going downhill, downhill,” Grimes said.
This time it was her left ankle, and it took a couple of weeks before she saw the court again.
Grimes made her return against Principia College. She only played a little bit, nine minutes off the bench, but that was enough for her to tweak her ailing left ankle and have further problems in her left foot.
Grimes sat out the next game against Blackburn College but decided to fight through the pain and play the final regular game of the season. She said her teammates advised her not to rush back, but she was not about to miss this game against Westminster. After all, it is the SLIAC’s marquee clash. With about four minutes remaining in the third quarter, disaster struck.
“We were on defense and me and my teammate were setting a trap on this girl,” Grimes said. “She was in the corner, so she started moving her elbows, swinging her head.”
Her opponent’s “swinging head” ended up catching Grimes in the nose.
“I was just caught off guard, and then I fell to the ground. I touched my nose and it felt like a snake,” Grimes said.
Grimes’ nose began bleeding, and she was advised to go to the emergency room by Reese Martinez, the team’s athletic trainer. She soon found out her nose was broken.
“And they still called the foul on me, so I don’t know,” Grimes laughed in retrospect.
Grimes recalled she was extremely upset.
“I got through the concussion, I got through both ankles, mostly, and then this happens. I was really mad,” she said.
The broken nose was the final straw for Grimes’ season. The next week, the week of the SLIAC tournament, she had to stay at home to prepare for surgery.
“I missed all my classes that week, I missed all the practices, all the games. I remember watching all the games from my TV, rooting for my team. It was hard not being there.”
The Gorloks went on to win the SLIAC Tournament, for the second consecutive year. They defeated Fontbonne University in the semi-final and narrowly overcame Westminster in the final.
“I watched them storm the court,” Grimes said. “I couldn’t be a part of that. But (teammate) Bethany Lancaster (FaceTimed) me and cut a piece of the net for me, so I was there on the phone.”
Grimes said her teammates offered great support while she was sidelined.
“It was really hard for me to get through the time with all the injuries, but I always had my teammates there. They would text me, check in on me and just make sure I knew that I’m wanted and needed on the team,” Grimes said.
On the flip side, Grimes did not let her personal frustrations affect the team. She made sure to help her team even if she could not do it from the court.
“I could’ve just not come to practices, not come to games and cheer my team on, but I know that that wasn’t me and I just tried to be the best teammate,” she said.
Head Coach Jordan Olufsen goes a step further and says Jordyn is the “ultimate teammate.”
“She wants to see her teammates’ success,” Olufsen said.
In recognition of her efforts, Grimes was voted ‘Best Teammate’ at the Gorlok Awards last spring. The vote was conducted not just among her teammates, but the entire athletic department.
Despite her Achilles still bothering her going into the summer, Grimes fully recovered over the off-season.
However, in late August of this year, just a few months before her senior season commenced, Grimes had another scare.
This time she had a seizure while attending Church. Having had one already, the first time being in her junior year of high school, she was diagnosed with epilepsy.
“I was just praying that that wouldn’t be another setback,” Grimes said. “(That) it wouldn’t be the start to another road of injuries. But it wasn’t. It was fine. It’s just something I will have to deal with in life.”
Grimes slowly got over her initial injury frustrations and began seeing them in a different light.
“I really have no regrets or no hatred towards how the season went last year because it really helped me grow as a player. Sitting out made me a better teammate, better point guard, better player because I learned so much about my team, and I learned different ways to look at the game. Of course, I wish I could’ve been there with my team playing but it set me up to have a great year this season.”
While her past injuries did play with her mind when she first returned, Grimes said they are not holding her back at all anymore.
“I really do feel like I’m at my peak. This is my last year, I gotta give it all I can give. Sitting out, I realized that that could happen at any moment, so I really have to do as much as I can, while I can.”
In Grimes’ three years at Webster so far, the Gorloks have won two SLIAC titles and were runners-up once. In her final season, she will be looking to end on a high: a third-consecutive conference championship and perhaps a run in the NCAA tournament.
Grimes has the option to return for a fifth year – to make up for the one lost to the pandemic. However, she is not certain she will take it because she has plans to go to law school, in her pursuit of becoming a lawyer.
If she does decide to play another year of basketball, Grimes said it could not be anywhere else but at Webster.
“I just have such a connection to the school, to the team, to the coaches, that I don’t think I could go somewhere else and play. I don’t think it would live up to my experience here,” she said.
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