Where are they now? Sophie Bussard

After 4 knee surgeries, ex-Valley star plans new life as speech pathologist

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

To know Sophie Bussard, you have to know about her rotten luck.

But also to know Sophie Bussard, you need to know who Bentley is, what he represents and how her rotten luck has shaped her future.

The rotten luck might have been worse than ever for Bussard, a 2019 Tippecanoe Valley grad, in the 2024-25 season with the Southeast Missouri State women’s basketball season.

“My last year didn’t exactly go how I had it in my head,” Bussard said. “I went through more injuries like I’ve faced pretty much my entire college career, but I feel like I probably grew the most this year than I had in any other year in college.”

The injuries

First, she dislocated her left shoulder against Texas in the second game of the season Nov. 10. She missed nearly three weeks and returned.

Then, during a practice right after Christmas, she re-tore her left meniscus, and that required surgery.

Then she came back and re-dislocated her shoulder.

She kept playing. It was important to her to finish her playing career on her terms.

"I was able to make it back out on the court because I just said this is my last year, I’m not going to go down without a fight, and if I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out playing. And then I got back out on the court. I don’t know if I was 70 percent, but I was out there. I dislocated my shoulder again in one of our games. I dislocated the same shoulder again.”

Southeast Missouri State – known as SEMO if you are in Cape Girardeau, Mo. – went 6-23 last season as the team made a coaching change from Rekha Patterson to Briley Palmer over the summer.

Bussard chuckles with a slight gallows humor when recalling reinjuring the shoulder. She said she had chosen not to wear her shoulder brace as she already was wearing a knee brace.

“I dislocated it in one of the games we were going to win,” Bussard said. “We were actually up, and it was in the fourth quarter with like two or three minutes left, and I was like, ‘Put it back in. I’m going to go get my brace.’ I was supposed to be wearing a brace, but I decided not to. It was like with the knee or the shoulder, one thing has got to go. I chose to take my brace that I was supposed to wear off. I hadn’t been wearing it, and then I dislocated it again, so that one was kind of my fault.”

Bussard wore the shoulder brace the rest of the season.

“I’m just going to go,” she said.

The shoulder injuries were new. The knee issues were not.

They started her junior year when she tore her right ACL and missed the season after surgery. She returned the following season with a medical redshirt.

In the summer of 2023, she re-tore her right meniscus and had surgery but made it back for the season.

Then she tore her left ACL and meniscus and missed the 2023-24 season. She received another medical redshirt and was back for a sixth season at SEMO before re-tearing her meniscus.

That led to her fourth knee surgery.

Bussard said she missed only one game in her high school career due to injury, and that was for a sprained ankle.

“I think it was my body telling me, ‘Hey, it’s time,’” Bussard said when asked why she had the knee injuries. “You play Division I basketball for six years. Normal is four. If I would have went the normal four, I maybe would have tore it once or whatever, but I think the level of play and the demand that Division I basketball has on your body probably played the biggest role into that. So I think it was just bad luck.”

March Madness denied

And the injuries were not her only misfortune in college. As a freshman in 2020, Bussard and SEMO won the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament for the first time in school history. But the NCAA Tournament was canceled due to COVID.

“I would say winning it was incredible,” Bussard said. “It’s just a feeling of like your hard work has paid off. Everyone talks about getting a ring and to have that. I’m going to have that for the rest of my life, but also that year was total heartbreak because of COVID. Your goal as a kid was always to get to March Madness. I wanted to play in March Madness. And then to have that in your fingertips and then to just have that taken away in a second was crazy. I still get chills. Right now I have chills talking about it because it’s like that team was so special and I truly believe if we ever would have gotten the chance to play in March Madness, I feel as if we would have won a game or maybe two, which for a small school like SEMO would’ve been unheard of. It was an incredible feeling. The entire season felt like something made up in a book. … We created memories, but we left history behind at SEMO. So I can say I was always part of history.”

‘Basketball doesn't determine who you are as a whole person’

Having the sport with which she was passionate taken away from her for long periods of time also affected her mental health.

“I was definitely better prepared for my second ACL tear, but I feel it definitely took a toll on my mental health,” Bussard said. “After I did it again for the second time, I felt prepared, but you’re in shock. Did I really do this again?”

That’s when Bentley entered her life. He is an Australian shepherd/border collie mix.

“At that time during my second ACL tear, my parents and I decided that it would probably be a good idea for me to get a puppy,” Bussard said. “So I ended up getting a dog. My mom and I talked about it, and it was like I felt this would be a good thing to get your mind off basketball and wanting to be out there and being upset about being hurt and just be able  to put your energy elsewhere.

“And I think that’s how I got through it was finding ways to put my time and energy and just like thoughts to somewhere else for a little bit while I was still working my butt off to get back and be able to play at a high level.”

Bussard said she never lost the love for basketball, but the injuries did make her think about her identity as a person. The ball was going to stop bouncing eventually, so it was time to start preparing for the future.

“Basketball can define who you are and how some people value your worth,” Bussard said. “I had to learn the hard way. Hey, what are you about? What are your other values? What else do you like to do? Basketball doesn't determine who you are as a whole person. I just had to go through that process which I think is now helping me as I’m ending my career to be able to process a little better.”

Interest in speech pathology

So Bussard poured herself into becoming a speech pathologist. She first became interested when she saw what a speech pathologist did with her great grandfather Bill Gearhart.

“He suffered a stroke when I was in high school, and he wasn’t able to speak out right directly. … And I got to watch the speech pathologist work with him, and he was able to get him back to a point to where he was able to say my name again,” Bussard said. “And just the amount of joy that brought to me, I can’t imagine what that would do for somebody else’s family too.”

Seeing Valley all-time boys basketball scoring leader Trey Eaton – Eaton’s wife Mallory was Bussard’s volleyball coach at Valley – improve after dealing with a stutter was another inspiration.

“I don’t think many people know this, but Trey Eaton, he trained me all through high school and was a super big person in my life, he actually stuttered when he was younger and had to go to a speech therapist in school. … Just being close with him and working with him a lot, that part really inspired me because you’re a person that stuttered as a child, and to be able to be as successful as he is was super inspiring to me,” Bussard said.

Using her athletic scholarship, Bussard would go on and obtain bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication disorders.

She said her surgeries came at a time when school work was about to become “extra busy for me.”

“I feel like that was God’s timing of, hey, I’m never going to give you anything that you can’t handle,” Bussard said. “So I don’t know if that was his way of saying this was going to be too much. This is how it needed to be done. … Honestly, those things went a lot smoother in the classroom because I wasn’t on the court. In reality, I think it probably did help me out a lot more than hurt me.”

She is in the process of finishing her clinical hours and getting a job. She would like to use her degree in the medical field.

“You can do a little bit of everything,” Bussard said. “So I could go, for example, (with) your speech teachers at school that will pull kids out to work on their articulation. Say, a lot of kids get pulled out for working on their letter ‘r’ or things like that. So I could go the school route. I could also go more of the medical route in terms of I could work with kids again and work on swallowing things with that. I could work with adults in skilled nursing facilities with their cognition and swallowing and whatnot, so there’s a wide variety of things that you can do with that degree.”

The Valley days

Bussard was an eighth-grader during Valley’s state runner-up season in 2015 but was an instant contributor as a freshman in 2016. Valley went 25-2 overall and 9-0 in the Three Rivers Conference. Their only losses were to Westfield in a holiday tournament and Heritage Christian in the regional final at Columbia City.

Playing alongside players like Anne Secrest, Hannah Dunn, Meredith Brouyette, Addy Miller and Emily Peterson, Valley also went 9-0 in the TRC and won another sectional crown in 2017 for coach Chris Kindig. Valley went 83-18 in Bussard’s four years at Valley.

Bussard was essentially a positionless player, able to play point guard one possession and in the post the next. She joined Rebekah Parker and Anne Secrest as Valley grads to play Division I basketball this century after averaging 21 points, 8 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals per game as a senior. She said she worked on improving her 3-point shot once she got to SEMO.

She also said she became a better leader at SEMO.

“At Valley I was like third or fourth tallest on the team, I was a little bit stronger than everybody, I was able to use my IQ,” Bussard said. “And so when you get to college, I felt like my IQ was always there, but you’re not going to outmuscle a 6-3 post player in college. You’re seeing those type of people every night, so I had to make adjustments, but I would definitely say my outside shooting is something that developed even more.”

Bussard grew up on a farm in Silver Lake where she raised dairy heifer calves.

“Seeing the amount of work that went into that, and I was just as much involved in it, so I feel like that part was just instilled in me to work hard and do things the right way. So I feel like those morals and values that I built off being raised by my parents, I just carried over to SEMO.”

Sophie would appear to not be the last Bussard to play big-time college sports. Her niece Dalynne, a senior-to-be, is both a starter on the Valley basketball team and a star pitcher and shortstop on the softball team.

“My biggest advice would be to stick to who you are,” Bussard said when asked what she would tell Dalynne. “When you go off to college, you always stick to who you are and how you were raised and what was instilled in you. Then the next thing would be whatever she decides to do and wherever she decides to go, I want her to make the right decision for her, not for anybody else but for what she wants out of a school and where she wants to be.”