After all those years listening to his sister Holly belt out cheers for Lawrence High and watching his brother Todd bury jumpers for the Lions, the time had arrived for Free State High senior Scott Heitshusen to hear his name announced with the starters at the gym where he did so much cheering as a little boy.

And all he could do was sit on the end of the bench and cheer again, this time against LHS for the Dec. 22 Sunflower League showdown. The painkillers he was taking three days after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee couldn’t do anything to keep him from hurting on the inside.

“It was tough to watch,” Heitshusen said before Thursday’s practice. “Warmups are the hardest thing to sit through when you don’t play, then when the game comes it’s almost like you feel like a coach.”

Heitshusen will play in tonight’s rematch at Free State, which was more than he thought he would be able to say when he suffered the injury. Initially, the fear was he had torn his anterior cruciate ligament, which would have killed the right fielder’s baseball season as well. It turned out to be a torn meniscus.

“Nothing better than the Lawrence High-Free State rivalry,” said Heitshusen, a third-year varsity player. “It’s nothing like anything else. It’s just so much fun, from the fans, everyone being there, and the fact it says Lawrence on their jerseys. You just want to beat them because they’re our rivals. There’s just nothing like all the fans coming to the game, gym is packed, loud as can be, you can’t hear anything on the court. It’s just an amazing experience.”

Players from both sides won’t need to be reminded this is not just another game. Their butterflies will tell them as much.

“We just need to box out, make the open shots, and make the first, easiest pass and just play our game and don’t be nervous because that first few minutes of the game is going to be rough,” Heitshusen said. “It’s always like that in the Lawrence game. It’s always going to be a little shaky the first few minutes, just because you’ve got so much adrenaline built up you don’t know what to do with it all. In order for us to win, we’ve just got to do those simple things.”

In the four games before the injury, Heitshusen averaged 14.3 points for the Firebirds. In the eight games since his return, he’s averaged 6.6 points.

“It’s been difficult getting his legs back under him,” first-year Free State coach Chuck Law said. “It’s taken some time, and two other guys were hurt the same game he came back. We really had to throw him out there a heck of a lot more initially than we wanted to. And he puts a lot of pressure on himself to score for us. His timing was off and his legs weren’t back under him yet and we were piecing him back into the team with the chemistry issues with him and Ryan (Murphy) coming back.”

With Heitshusen back and playing against Lawrence, the school for which he was a ballboy, that means at least one former Lions star has to root against his old school.

“I was a pretty big Lawrence High fan obviously,” Heitshusen said. “Once I figured out I was going here, the tables turned for the family. They all root for me. So it’s not like that cutthroat Lawrence High tradition in their blood. Todd comes to most of the games and he’ll be there (tonight).”

Even for those who didn’t used to play for one of the teams and now has a brother playing for the other, there doesn’t figure to be a better place for a sports fan to be tonight than at the Free State gymnasium, where Heitshusen will show off his three-point touch and Tyler Knight and Kristian Pope will do the same for Lawrence.

“All three of us played on the same team for a few summers,” Heitshusen said. “That’s another thing that makes this game so much fun.”