Miracle Moment: Basketball player bouncing back

It’s time for Miracle Moment.

A basketball player, Karsten Schafer, is preparing to get off the bench and back in the game after doctors told him he might never play again.

He’s 6 feet, 3 inches, and, at 16 years old, still has room to grow.

But an MRI done after he started to suffer from excruciating back pain revealed a tumor that threatened his hoop dreams.

“They told me, going into my 15-hour surgery, that they didn’t think I was gonna play sports again,” Schafer said.

That is terrible news for a kid who just wanted to shoot and score for Fort Myers High School.

“It was a huge tumor, consuming, like, I think it was like 80% of my l5 vertebrae, and it was like eating away at it,” Schafer said.

Surgeons replaced that vertebrae with a titanium cage.

As soon as doctors said, “OK, give it a shot,” Schafer found his form.

“I made 96 out of 100 free throws in a row, and then, I was actually able to come in and use the shooting machine at the school one day, and I ended up making 360 threes out of 400,” Schafer said.

But getting to that point, as described by his dad, was a formidable feat: the pain, the surgery and recovery, learning to walk, physical therapy and now, rigorous training.

It’s been a year, almost to the day of Schafer’s spinal surgery.

It was actually his third surgery after decompression surgery and a procedure to freeze the tumor didn’t work.

So when Schafer walks out on the court to play for the Green Wave next month, it will be the first time in two years.