Franklin junior Alyx Stacy warms up before running laps at an after-school practice.
Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
Alyx Stacy’s reasoning for running cross country has remained impressively consistent over the years.
Her expectations during a meet are another story.
The Franklin junior’s world was flipped upside down in October of 2022 when a surgical procedure to remove a mass in her pelvis was botched to the point of leaving Stacy without any muscle below her right knee.
“Alyx had some hip pain when she was running in middle school. She did X-rays and MRIs, and they found a mass in her pelvis,” Stacy’s mom, Roxanne, explained. “That mass, thankfully, was benign.
“It needed to come out, so we did all our research and found a good surgeon to take that out, we thought. When she woke up from the surgery, she couldn’t move her right leg.”
The surgeon, it turns out, missed the intended mass by approximately six inches.
Stacy, only 14 at the time, remembers this life-altering sequence of events all too well.
“The first thing I said when I woke up was, ‘I can’t feel my leg,’” she said. “I had a follow-up MRI, which is when we could tell he didn’t take out the cyst. I was definitely very scared.
“There were a lot of tears, and a lot of that was because of the pain I was in.”
Prior to the surgery — and the one that would follow nine months later in July 2023 — Stacy took part in one junior varsity meet as a Grizzly Cub freshman, posting her team’s fastest time at Plainfield by covering the two-mile layout in 14 minutes, 24 seconds.
Following her second surgery, Stacy shut it down for the remainder of the 2022 cross country season and all of the 2023 campaign. Nonetheless, it remained important to her to remain close to the program.
“She still wanted to be part of the team,” Franklin girls cross country coach Ray Lane said. “Alyx is very energetic, and it’s good to have that energy around. It’s contagious.”
Few, if any, would have blamed Stacy for not returning to the sport this season, but here she is. Wearing an ankle foot orthosis (AFO) brace to fix drop foot, she guts her way through practices and meets alike.
Her first meet of the season, the Franklin Invitational, resulted in Stacy running a time of 39:22. She followed with a 40:03 at the Brown County Eagle Classic, and last week’s season-best 37:45 at the annual Johnson County meet.
Stacy, who’ll take part in today’s Mid-State Conference meet at Franklin, was one of the final competitors to finish at county. However, the more meets she runs, the more admirers she collects.
According to Lane, coaches from other schools often ask about Stacy, hear about all she’s endured physically and mentally and usually wind up shaking their heads in amazement.
Stacy’s parents, Josh and Roxanne, are understandably proud. At the same time, human nature has everyone involved playing the what-if game regarding both athletics and the remainder of Stacy’s life.
Had the initial surgery gone correctly 23 months ago, she predicts she would be finishing 5K races with times somewhere between 21 and 23 minutes. Lane is confident Stacy would have been a top-10 runner on Franklin’s team as a sophomore and would be among his first seven this season.
“I’m just proud of her drive. What she could have been doing, I think, is the hardest part,” Roxanne said. “She’s gone through it … there’s a lot of anger, sadness. All those things. She’s come to the point now where she accepts this, and is happy to be among these girls and the coaches.”
Asked if there continues to be anger, Josh doesn’t hesitate.
“Oh, for sure,” he said. “But it’s her new normal that we’re gauging now instead of the old.”
Alyx Stacy, an excellent student with a 3.94 grade-point average, aspires to one day become an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Everything she’s gone through the past two years has helped push her in this direction. This is a young lady, after all, who can no longer feel her right foot and ankle, and is unable to wiggle the toes on her right foot.
Stacy wears the brace at school and at home (most of the time), but takes it off when going to bed.
“It’s definitely changed me a lot. I’ve definitely matured a lot faster,” she said. “I have a lot of support from my friends. They know what I’ve been through. I’ve come to terms with it now.”
