Not only is he happy to be back on the basketball court shooting baskets for the University of Mary, former Montevideo star Lance Doppler is just happy to be breathing.
Doppler was involved in a freakish accident during a men's basketball game last January against Augustana in Sioux Falls. In the first half of the game, Doppler slid out to try and take a charge on a pick-and-roll play, but an Augustana post player's elbow pounded into the slender senior guard's chest.
"I could hardly breath," Doppler recalled. "I went to the sideline and (the trainer's) checked to see if I had cracked ribs. They didn't really find anything wrong with my ribs so I said I could go play again. I just thought I had the wind knocked out of me."
Doppler returned to the court, still in pain, and it wasn't long after that he got sandwiched between a teammate and an Augustana player. The contact caused his sternum to snap and overlap itself.
"No one knew what happened or that I was even hurt," Doppler remembers. "They continued with the play so I got under the basket to get out of the way. I could just barely breath. Only little short breaths."
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Doppler immediately was examined by a medical staff with his parents, Marques and Tina, and older brother, Lucas, there, too.
"I remember Lance pulling his shirt up and I couldn't believe it," Lucas said. "There was a huge indention in his chest. It was really hard to look at."
That's when Lance knew it was something more serious than a cracked rib.
"When I pulled my shirt up, I saw my parents and brother look at each other with this look on their face that this was something bad," Lance said. "Luckily, we were playing in Sioux Falls where they have a good hospital. They rushed me there so fast that my teammates and coaches didn't even know what was wrong. Some of them didn't even see me leave."
Once at the Sioux Falls Hospital, Dopplers was examined by several doctors, all who said :they had never seen anything like this."
Doppler figures his sternum was cracked by the player's elbow, the broken off in the next collision.
Doppler had surgery within 45 minutes of his arrival at the hospital where surgeons wired his sternum back together. He missed the remainder of his junior season where he was leading the Marauders in scoring (12.2 points-per-game) at the time of his injury. He was back in full health at the start of this season.
"I thought about (the injury) the first time I got hit in a game this year," said Doppler. "But with the excitement of the game, you don't really think about that much."
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This season, Doppler is third on the team with an 8.7 points-per-game average, He leads the Marauders in three-pointers with 19 and in three-point accuracy (49 percent). And he is third in steals. The Marauders are currently 2-8.
Doppler, a three-time All-Area player who finished his prep career with 1,554 points, is planning on becoming a dentist and will have four more years of school after this year.
Just imagine the reaction of the player who cracked his sternum if he needed a root canal in the future and the only dentist in town was Dr. Doppler.
