All Ty-ed up

The entire celebration had been designed for her.
The folding table underneath the basketball goal was decorated with red and black balloons representing the team she is signing with, homemade banners celebrating her accomplishment were hung in the background, there was another table off to the side being set up for cake while teammates, friends, coaches, teachers and family gathered around to snap plenty of photos of her big moment.
All of that was for Ville Platte High’s Tyreonna Doucet, a star forward on the girl’s basketball team who signed her National Letter of Intent Wednesday morning with Louisiana-Lafayette.
Even with the spotlight squarely focused to shine on the 6-foot-2 senior for the obstacles she had to overcome to get to that moment, the young lady known to loved ones as Ty wasn’t thinking about herself.
For her the celebration was one she gladly shared with her father Timothy Doucet.
“It is an important day,” Ty said. “I can do something that my dad wanted to do but wasn’t able to. This is something that we can experience together.”
The dream of the younger Doucet one day signing a scholarship to play college basketball was something her father believed she could accomplish at a very young age.
“I knew she was special at five years old,” Timothy said. “I was outside playing basketball with one of her older brothers and she just started dribbling. I hadn’t taught her that yet. She just picked it up. Anything I taught her she would pick it up quickly.”
His instinct proved to be more than just an overzealous sports parent as the younger Doucet proved she was the real deal.
Doucet played for Ville Platte High as an eighth grader, and that following summer the then 6-foot-1 star attended a camp hosted by Louisiana-Lafayette. Her height and skill set impressed those in attendance so much, that many just assumed that she was entering her senior season.
“She was playing against older girls and they thought she was going to be a senior because she was so tall,” Timothy said. “When UL found out that she was younger they offered her a scholarship on the spot.”
With a scholarship offer already in hand, Doucet entered her freshman season ready to stake claim as one of the area’s best girls basketball players.
Doucet did not disappoint.
That season Doucet earned second-team all-state honors as she averaged 12.7 points per game and helped the Lady Bulldogs to the Class 3A championship game, falling to University Lab 63-56.
That kind of play attracted other schools such as Louisiana Tech and even LSU.
“As a freshman she was very dominant,” longtime Ville Platte High girls coach Dorothy Doulet said. “She knew things that an average freshman wouldn’t know. She knew how to read the court real well and she got the job done. She had a bright future and everyone was eager to see her keep playing and playing.”
That future though would dim over the next two years.
As a sophomore, Doucet helped the Lady Bulldogs to an 11-0 start but she felt that something was off, as she kept having aggravating pain from her right knee.
“I thought it was growing pains or something,” Ty said. “I knew something was wrong because when I ran or jumped it felt like something was rubbing on something else.”
Following a victory over North Central shortly before the Christmas break, Doucet was examined by a doctor and he determined that she had torn the meniscus in her right knee. Doucet had to have her arthroscopy surgery on her knee that January and she would face nine months of difficult rehabilitation.
“I was nervous,” said Ty, who believes that she originally tore the ligament while competing in a long jump event during a regional track and field meet. “That was the first surgery I ever had. I just sat there in the bed hoping that they had fixed it so I could play again. I mean I was hoping that I could be back to play in the Top 28.”
Doucet wasn’t able to come back and play that year and was forced to watch as her teammates made the Top 28 in Lake Charles but fell in the semifinals.
“The most hurtful part was that I couldn’t help my team when they needed me,” Ty said. “It was painful because I sat there and saw that my team was struggling and I couldn’t do anything. I was hurting.”
With support from her family and friends, Doucet did recover from the devastating knee injury and was ready to lead the Lady Bulldogs back to the Top 28 last season. Her junior season though began and ended in the same fashion as her sophomore season -- with another knee injury.
“I was trying to get back to where I was my freshman year,” Ty said. “Then it happened again.”
After 11 games, Doucet was once again shutdown prior to Christmas break as doctors discovered that she had torn the meniscus in her left knee.
“I woke up the morning of the Lafayette game and I couldn’t walk,” Ty said. “But I still played. I didn’t tell anyone because I knew that Lafayette was a tough team and we needed a win.
“I thought to myself that I had played with the injury before so I thought I could do it again.”
Her coach though saw that her star player began to limp after coming down for a rebound and pulled her from the game. That was the last game Doucet played as a junior as she was forced to have surgery in February, this time removing the torn ligament all together.
“Yeah I got really discouraged,” Ty said. “I just tried not to think about it and stay positive.”
Helping keep her head up through the mental and physical pain of having not one but two major knee surgeries was her coach and father.
“We came to accept it and we kept her motivated by encouraging her during her rehabilitation,” Coach Doulet said. “I told her ‘Ty these things happen but now you have a responsibility from the sideline to coach and motivate your teammates.’ I gave her a coaching job on the side to keep her motivated and she enjoyed it.”
Her father meanwhile knew all too well what his daughter was going through, in particular what it meant to possibly have your dreams of playing college basketball taken away due to an injury.
The older Doucet played basketball at VPHS from 1993-95 and like nearly every teenage boy that picks up a ball in town he too dreamt of playing in college, maybe not a big Division I school but a NAIA or Division II or III program.
Then came a routine play during practice his senior season.
“Me and one of my teammates were both going for a rebound,” Timothy said. “I grabbed the ball and he accidently poked me in the eye. I didn’t go to the doctor right then because I thought it was no big deal. Then I woke up one day about a week later and there was something floating in my eye. I went to the doctor and I had a detached retina.”
The injury caused the older Doucet to be nearly blind in one eye and his dreams of college ball ended that day. So when his daughter experienced her own setback not once but twice, he knew that he needed to be a supportive father but also a motivator during the rehab process.
“I just was always confident with her,” Timothy said. “I just always wanted to let her know that she was going to be great and that she was going to come back and play and that she was going to be dominant once again.”
With having the ligament actually removed, Doucet’s recovery time decreased from nine months down to four and half. Doucet began the journey back to basketball shape by playing AAU ball this past summer for the Louisiana Lady Legends.
Even though she played over the summer, and has practiced diligently with the team this fall, Doucet admits that she is not quite where she was physically four years ago but she is working towards that every day.
“I am not in shape like I was my freshman year,” Ty said. “I can’t run full out like I did then -- not yet but I am working at it every day. I will get back to where I was. I am not scared of nothing.
“I don’t want to be remembered for playing only my freshman season and then being injured,” Ty added. “I want to be known for more than just that one season. I want to be known for bringing us a state championship.”
For Doucet’s father, the moment on Wednesday when he sat down next to his daughter at that decorated table and watched her sign her paperwork filled him with joy but it is just one special moment that he and his daughter they experienced together.
“The words can’t express how I feel,” Timothy said. “It was a tough journey for her but she put in the hard work and dedicated herself to achieve this goal. But this is just the beginning. We wanted to get to college but we want to go beyond college. The dream is to see her play in the WNBA. This is just the beginning.”