Tanja Harrison can joke about it now.

About how she walked into daughter Kelsey’s room and saw a variety of medications sprinkled on the floor while her 11-year-old daughter lay immobile wearing a cast from her abdomen all the way down her right leg and halfway down the left.

“The little stinker hid them under her pillow. Then, she started taking (her pills) out of her mouth and throwing them in her trash can – which I think helped her shooting,” Tanja Harrison said. “But one time she missed, and I caught her.

“I threatened her within an inch of her life. It was enough to scare her to take her medications.”

It was one of many emotional interactions that helped Kelsey Harrison, now a junior at Free State High, overcome the tragic accident six years ago that doctors feared might hinder her for the rest of her life.

While visiting their grandparents in the western Kansas town of Ulysses, Harrison and her two older sisters tore off across the family farm on a set of all-terrain vehicles for some Christmas Eve fun. The experience took a drastic turn for the worse when an unheeded warning, too much dust, a faulty tire and a ditch conspired to send Kelsey – the youngest of the three – out of control while riding at more than 30 mph.

Free State junior Kelsey Harrison overcame a serious leg injury seven years ago and is now a key performer for the Firebirds in both basketball and volleyball.

Harrison hit the ground with a thud, bounced and hit the ground again. The primary impact caused a transverse fracture in her right femur and left a visible impression on the land.

And through it all, she failed to realize the gravity of her predicament.

While sister Erin ran a mile back to the house to summon help – she was too scared to ride her ATV – Kelsey and her other sister, Ashlee, sang pop tunes to pass the time until help arrived.

Once paramedics stabilized her injury, all she could think about was the little piece of a sticker bush that got caught between the skin on the back of her leg and the brace.

And while riding in an ambulance to the hospital in Ulysses, she casually chatted about basketball with her distraught mom.

“The first thing I said to my mom was, ‘I’m not going to be able to play in the Little Apple Tournament,'” Harrison said about the annual youth hoops fest in Manhattan. “I did think about sports first, so that was awkward.

“She said we probably don’t need to be thinking about that right now.”

Indeed, no sports were in Harrison’s immediate future. She was flown to Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, where her uncle, Paul Harrison, was the head of trauma. The next day – at 7 a.m. Christmas morning – surgeons fitted two titanium rods into her leg and fitted her for her body cast. Soon after, an orthopedic surgeon delivered the grim news that she might never regain full range of motion in her leg.

No basketball in the immediate future was one thing. No basketball at all was quite another.

“I’m a competitive person, and I love playing sports,” Harrison said. “It was scary to think I might not be able to play the game anymore.”

So, while her meds became her public enemy No. 1 – “I got so sick of taking pills. I had to take seven or eight a day” – Harrison threw herself into rehab, determined to play softball the following spring and pick up her basketball career the following winter.

“I have to really give her full credit, because she worked hard at rehab,” said Tanja Harrison, who played basketball one semester at Nebraska. “When people told her to do 10 (repetitions), and at 10 she’d be in a lot of pain, she would do 12. She wanted her mobility back.”

Seven years later, to see Harrison in action, one would never know she took a detour. A slender 5-foot-11 forward who enters tonight’s Class 6A showdown against rival Lawrence High as the Firebirds’ third-leading scorer at 6.5 points per game, she has blossomed into one of the most important players in Free State coach Bryan Duncan’s rotation.

“Kelsey’s certainly our most underrated player, media-wise and opposing coach-wise. Her stats aren’t necessarily gaudy,” Duncan said. “She defends the other team’s best player. She handles the ball well for us. We expect her to score. She does a lot of things for us.

“And she’s an extremely smart player. As a coach, you can always tell if you’re making the right decision by looking at her.”

Her strengths aren’t limited to the basketball court. Last season, she ran the hurdles during track season – perhaps the strongest testament yet to a full recovery. And her future may be in volleyball, where she doubles as an outside hitter and a middle blocker.

Which leaves precious little free time. But Harrison has no second thoughts about how she’d choose to spend some of it.

On an ATV.

“Actually, I have been on one. It was with my grandpa,” she said. “My dad doesn’t want me back on one at all.

“I’d get back on one in a heartbeat because it was fun.”