Benefield: Morgan Bertsch’s WNBA journey takes 2 new twists

Bertsch wasn’t on it.

“I wasn’t upset,” she said. “It was the process they had to do. I don’t blame them. I knew it was a small shot to begin with. It was essentially without being able to prove myself.”

So with no WNBA squad interested and COVID in full bloom, Bertsch starting working out outside, at neighborhood playgrounds in Santa Rosa, alone in preparation for the upcoming European season she was eyeing.

“It was like I was a kid again,” she said. “I’m at these schools, the courts are slanted one way, there’s a double rim with no net and tiny backboard.”

Late that summer, Bertsch headed overseas again, this time to Poland.

COVID was still raging so she couldn’t host visitors. Team activities were limited. But she was playing great. So she returned to the U.S. in the spring with high hopes.

Again.

She accepted a training camp invitation with the Connecticut Sun.

“I definitely felt like I had a shot at it,” Bertsch said.

But she was let go.

Again.

“ (The coach) was saying you have a place in the league,” she said. “He said, ‘You deserve to be here, but it’s just not going to work this year.’ It was definitely difficult.”

Bertsch headed back to Poland, this time to a different team.

She played well, her confidence spiked.

Come spring, Dallas, the team that originally drafted her out of Davis, came calling.

On the second or third day, Bertsch was at the trainer getting treatment for an Achilles issue. The medical staff noticed a bug bite on the back of her knee. Bertsch told them it no longer itched, that it now hurt.

She was given steroid cream. The next day it felt worse.

“It was so incredibly painful,” Bertsch said. She could barely walk.

Another day passed. When she showed up to the gym, the medical crew took one look at her swollen, red leg and sent her to the emergency room.

Bertsch had a massive infection that had spread down her leg. She was put on intravenous antibiotics and admitted to the hospital.

She went into surgery to try to eliminate the infection. She had a wound vacuum attached to the back of her knee.

Bertsch was diagnosed with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is difficult to treat because of its resistance to some antibiotics. She spent five days in the hospital.

“They were honestly worried about whether I would be able to play again,” Bertsch said. “It was a pretty life-altering moment.”

But the infection cleared.

She gave herself some to time to evaluate where she was and where she might go. She wondered if it included basketball.

“I was thinking about how many years I was trying to give it a go,” Bertsch said. “After the hospital, it was like, ‘Obviously maybe this was not meant to be.’”

But to quote Run-DMC, Bertsch wasn’t going out like that.

So she signed on with a Belgian team.

“Full send, I went for it,” she said. “It ended up being my absolutely best season overseas. It was exactly what I needed.”

So when Chicago (finally) called in April, Bertsch was ready.

She got minutes in the preseason opener against Dallas and crushed it. She went 4-5 with 9 points and 3 rebounds in eight minutes.

It earned her more time. Against the Indiana Fever she played nearly 22 minutes, scoring seven points.

Then the Sky’s starting post player went down with an injury. Bertsch was named a starter for a game in Toronto against the Minnesota Lynx.

“It had been a month. I went from not thinking I was going to have a training camp and now I’m starting in the first WNBA game in Canada in front of 20,000 people.”

“I was literally like, ‘How did this happen?’” she said.

But this is Bertsch’s story, so there had to be another twist. And there was: To her left ankle.

Bertsch came down awkwardly late in the second quarter in the Sky’s May 26 loss to the Washington Mystics.

When we talked Wednesday, Bertsch was in a boot with a sprain.

But she’s rehabbing and calls her return day-to-day.

After working so hard to break in, becoming a starter, only to go down with an ankle injury, some people might question their luck.

Not Bertsch. She remains positive and philosophical.

“If this is the route that it needs to go, that is just how it has to be,” she said. “It sucks, but I have made enough of an impact in the month or two that I have been there, I do believe in myself that I can make an impact.”

Bertsch seems to tread a fine line between being exceedingly grateful for where her career has brought her and acknowledging the enormous amount of work and guts it took to get here.

She reminds herself of the exactly one scholarship offer she got out of high school, of redshirting her freshman year, of the expectation that she’d squeeze all she could out of college hoops and call it a day.

“I fully thought I was going to be an engineer,” the biomedical engineering major said. “So there is a part of me that can’t believe it in that aspect.”

But facts are facts.

“The longer I have played overseas, the longer my confidence has grown and I have been able to recognize that I’m a really good basketball player,” she said. “It shouldn’t be a surprise to me or anyone else that I’m here in the (WNBA).”

Bertsch isn’t about to let an ankle sprain stop her now.

The Sky needs her now, and she’s already signed on to spend her offseason playing in Girona, Spain.

Bertsch says she’s been lucky in a lot of ways. She’s gracious and appreciative.

But let’s be clear. This ain’t about luck.

It’s about old-fashioned will and drive. And guts.

And Bertsch has it in spades.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.