Collier is UW women’s basketball team’s inspiration

Katie Collier loves her long blonde hair. Of course, when Collier learned she had contracted a form of cancer, the first question she posed to doctors had nothing to do with the possibility of losing her hair during chemotherapy.

“That was my second question!” Collier recalled with one of her frequent laughs.

Collier’s first question was a tad more serious: “Am I going to die?”

Five years after doctors told she would never play basketball again because of leukemia, and four years after her first season of college basketball was delayed a year by major knee surgery, Collier is the starting center for the Washington Huskies.

Despite the obstacles facing her, Collier never forgot how to bring joy to those around her. Collier’s zest for life and her considerable basketball skills will be on display Thursday night when the Huskies face Colorado in the opening round of the Pac-12 Conference tournament at KeyArena.

“She is truly inspirational to every one of the people who come in contact with her,” Washington coach Mike Neighbors said.

“What a resilient person she is,” teammate Kelsey Plum said. “She always has a smile on her face.

“One of the things I love about Katie is, Katie can be hurting really bad (but) it’s not about her, it’s about the team, it’s about everything else.”

Collier’s high school teammates at Seattle Christian can attest to that. Collier played 18 of 28 games her senior year at the little SeaTac school while undergoing treatment for leukemia. She often endured four hours of chemo in the afternoon, dragged herself to the gym, then made it through that night’s game after vomiting at halftime.

Collier said she played to help her teammates physically, and to help herself mentally.

“It gave me a sense of normalcy when my world was turned upside down,” Collier said.

Thanks partly to treatments with arsenic — “It’s like rat poison,” Collier said — doctors told Collier her prognosis was excellent for surviving leukemia. As for their contention she was done with basketball …

“I gave myself about a month and a half off, then I just had to play. They didn’t know me,” Collier said.

Collier earned All-America honors and ESPN’s No. 22 ranking among recruits in 2011-12 while fighting her disease. She acknowledges it was “devastating and sad” to learn she had leukemia after becoming ill on her official recruiting visit to Washington, but Collier said her primary concern was “making sure my family was OK … I don’t want that to be a burden on them.”

Neighbors said, “The way she did it, with a smile on her face — she was the last person in her family to cry about it. She just strengthened everyone around her during this whole process.”

Collier said she drew inspiration from her mother, a nurse who battled breast cancer for years. Like her daughter, Ann Collier is now healthy.

“She gave me a picture of hope,” Katie said, “showing me somebody can go through chemo and feel weak but still go about your life and do what you want to do. For me, that was basketball.”

Collier, a 6-foot-3 center/forward from Covington, leads the Huskies with 30 blocked shots in her first season as a starter. She ranks fourth in scoring (5.8 points per game) and third in rebounding (5.6).

“The experience of being around her, it inspires me every day,” Neighbors said. “When I think I’m having a bad day, I just look at her and she goes, ‘Hey, ‘Nabes,’ how you doin’?’ with a big smile. I’m thinking, ‘OK, get over yourself. Your problems are not nearly as big.’ ”

The fifth-seeded Huskies (20-9), led by Plum and her league-leading 26.5 points per game, must win four games in as many days to claim the Pac-12 tournament title. Washington is 2-0 against 12th-seeded Colorado (7-22) this season.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Collier is UW women’s basketball team’s inspiration."