There was never a moment in the last five years when Georgetown redshirt senior RaMell Ross seriously thought about giving up basketball: not when he dislocated his left shoulder, not when he fractured his ankle twice in a four-month span, not even when he dislocated his right shoulder.
"Maybe that was in the far corner of my mind," Ross said of quitting. "But basketball is my first love."
RaMell Ross has overcome numerous injuries and continues to play for the Hoyas.
(John McDonnell - The Washington Post)
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It has been a very fickle love for Ross, who has undergone four surgeries on three different parts of his body since his senior year at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke. The multiple injuries limited Ross to 147 minutes of playing time spread out over his first four years at Georgetown, but this season he is finally healthy and finally contributing the way he always felt he could.
Ross, 22, will be on the court tonight when the Hoyas (4-2) face Oral Roberts in the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu. His father, Robert, will be in the stands, just as he has been for every Georgetown home game since the 2000-01 season, RaMell's freshman year.
The 6-foot-6 guard is averaging 4.8 points in 16.5 minutes as a reserve, and he is shooting a team-best 51.9 percent. He has also emerged as one of the leaders of a young Georgetown team.
"We're extremely fortunate that he's here," said Coach John Thompson III, who named Ross one of the Hoyas' captains. "He has a stubbornness about him; he wills his way through situations. . . . Everything that he does, on the court, in practice, in the locker room, has been invaluable."
Ross was one of the best players in Northern Virginia as a junior at Lake Braddock, averaging 20.7 points per game. He spent most of his free time working on his game, driving to Maret School in Northwest Washington or Run-n-Shoot in Prince George's County to play pickup games with local standouts such as Joe Forte and Keith Bogans.
"I would've said I had pretty high hopes" for his basketball career at that time, Ross said. "I certainly didn't foresee any injuries."
Ross had never had a major injury until the summer between his junior and senior years at Lake Braddock, when his left shoulder popped out during an AAU tournament in Las Vegas. Ross didn't think the injury was all that serious -- he was initially told it was a pulled muscle -- but the shoulder continued to bother him over the next couple of months. He had surgery in November and was forced to watch his senior season from the bench.
"He was crushed," Robert Ross said. "At first, he didn't even want to watch basketball, but I told him he needed to go to all the games and sit on the bench and support his team. He hung in there."
He appeared in 12 games as a freshman at Georgetown, though he was still recovering from the shoulder surgery. The Hoyas went 25-8 that season and advanced to the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament. Ross fractured his ankle while playing pickup basketball the following summer. He underwent surgery to have a screw put in, but was relatively happy because he would be ready to play when practices began.
But in mid-October, Ross rolled his ankle, the screw popped out and he re-fractured his ankle. He had surgery once again, and was forced to miss the entire 2001-02 season. That was the low point, Ross said, because it was an unexpected setback when he had been playing well.
Ross's junior year was going well until he dislocated his right shoulder a few weeks before practice was set to begin. That injury didn't keep him sidelined for the entire season, however; he came off the bench in 14 games. But the shoulder never completely healed, and he continued to dislocate it. He played four minutes in one game last year, and then, once again, had season-ending surgery to fix his right shoulder.
"He's had a lot of reasons to pack it in, but that's not in his makeup," Thompson said. "He has that stubbornness, and I say that in a positive light. He is not a quitter, he is not going to walk away. As I've gotten to know him, it's not surprising at all that he's still here."
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