It took Mara Braun less than 10 seconds to launch her first shot in the season opener for the University of Minnesota Gophers women’s basketball team on Nov. 4. That shot didn’t fall, but her first three-point attempt—less than a minute into the game—did drop to give the Gophers a 5-3 lead they’d never surrender in a 91-47 victory over North Dakota at The Barn.
It’s not that Braun was rushing her shots in the opening minute; it was more like she was making up for a whole lot of lost time.
In her sophomore season two years ago, Braun broke her right foot during a January contest. At the time, she was the Gophers’ leading scorer at 17.8 points per game (fourth in the Big Ten), and despite playing in just 20 games that year, she wound up being named All–Big Ten Honorable Mention by both the coaches and the media.
Then last year lightning struck again, insidiously, during a shootaround before a game in November. Without anyone landing on her foot or any contact whatsoever, she broke the same fifth metatarsal bone in her foot. For Braun, it was another mostly lost season.
Her two biggest emotions were shock and disappointment. “I thought that we did everything [right in the recovery] and we were cautious about coming back,” she says. “It’s one of those things where I was feeling good leading up to it, had a pretty good start to the year and was feeling confident. And things just happen. We’re not really sure why it happened, but it did.”
Braun’s deja vu injury last year came in a season filled with considerable promise for her and the Gophers. It ended with the Gophers missing out on an NCAA tournament bid, but getting invited to and winning the 32-team Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament (WBIT) as Braun looked on… and cheered and coached.
Almost a full year to the date after that second injury, Braun savored her return to game action against North Dakota. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, and just itching to be back,” she says. “Just being back in game situations, it’s really exciting.”
The grind of rehab, times two
Suffering the exact same injury twice—and having it derail her season in consecutive years—is not an easy thing to deal with for a competitive athlete.
“With the shock of it happening the second time, you almost do go through the different stages of grief,” Braun says. “It’s a real thing with injury. Denial, but then accepting it and being able to attack it.”
She says her first day back on campus after the surgery last year was the hardest, knowing all too well the rehabilitation in front of her. The recovery timeline would be even longer, “which was hard for me because I’m very impatient and I just wanted to get back on the court,” she says.
For a time, she was dribbling and shooting from a chair, then was able to take part in drills, with head coach Dawn Plitzuweit making sure to keep her actively engaged with the team. As the season progressed, Braun became, in essence, another coach on the bench—a role she embraced.
“I’ve always kind of wanted to go into coaching anyway. I feel like I’ve seen the game from that view a lot of my life,” says Braun, who’s majoring in business and marketing education and this spring will be starting a master’s program in sports management. “I love to play basketball but I also just love to analyze it, so I think that was a good opportunity for me to be able to focus on that. I wasn’t able to help physically, but I could communicate with my teammates. … Sometimes it’s easier to hear it from a teammate than a coach.”
Amaya Battle, a close friend and fellow Class of 2022 recruit who lived with Braun for their first two years on campus, agrees that Braun was a vocal leader—talking through situations and helping her and her teammates see things on the court. And when the game might be going sideways and her emotions were out of whack, “She was able to center me, bring me back,” Battle says. “I’m really grateful for that.”
Also, Braun could be a “comedic relief presence, just cracking a joke on the bench,” Battle says. "Her presence meant a lot to me individually and a lot to the team.”
Not taking anything for granted
Fortunately for Braun, she was granted a medical redshirt for last year and will have another year of eligibility for the Gophers next year. But first things first: regaining her full form, and helping a much deeper team (that won’t need to rely on her to fill up the scoresheet) make a return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2018.
She’s savoring life on the raised court of The Barn after the repetitive, grinding rehab regimen that has dominated her sports world for the better part of two years.
“It’s amazing. I just try not to take it for granted,” Braun says. “Any second that I get caught up in my emotions—the frustration of why shots aren’t falling or why isn’t this coming back to me [quickly]—it’s like, taking into account that I have been out for a while and that it’s gonna take time, and also just giving myself grace. … I’m so thankful to be out there in the first place.”
“People outside of the team don’t really see the ‘behind-the-scenes’ on what it takes from any injury to get back to the court,” notes Battle, who spoke from the Bahamas in between the team’s two Thanksgiving-week tournament games. “And it takes a lot, physically and mentally. Mara handled that really well. And through that experience she’s been a leader for other people.
“Even getting your rhythm back—after one year that’d be really hard, but to get it back after two [years away]… She’s able to be, ‘Yep, this is the process, but I’m going to keep chipping away at it every day and I’m going to get back.’ And she’s having great moments. We still have a long ways to go. Just wait and see; she’s going to have a great season.”
The Gophers open their Big Ten schedule on Dec. 7 at Williams Arena against No. 7-ranked and perennial power Maryland, led by former Minnesota head coach Brenda Frese. Follow the team at Gopher Sports.
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