Story Photos
 Brittany Wright has overcome cancer and personal challenges, and after a move from Kelso, she is playing games as a Rainier Columbian.
Photo by Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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The Wright look
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 5:30 AM PST
By Janine Manny
Printable version
E-mail this articleRAINIER - Every time Rainier senior Brittany Wright got near the Warrenton student section Saturday night, she heard the taunts.
"One eye! One eye!"
Teammate Mollee Schwegler paid a visit to the Warrenton students and told them to shut up. Brittany helped silence her tormentors by racking up 17 points and pulling down seven rebounds in a Rainier's lopsided 60-37 victory.
As petty and cruel as those students were, they were accurate.
Brittany only has one eye.
Four days after her fourth birthday, Brittany underwent surgery to remove her left eye because of retinal blastoma, a cancer that typically strikes infants and young children.
Now at 18, it's impossible to tell which of her lovely blue orbs is a prosthetic unless she looks up. After surgery last summer to insert a peg, her left eye moves in sync side-to-side with her right.
"This is my third (surgery) since I was 4," she said, pointing to her left eye. "Now that it tracks with the other one, it's really great."
Brittany moved to Rainier from Kelso with her family, including twin brother Jon, nearly three years ago for their sophomore year. Jon also plays basketball for the Columbians.
"We needed a scenery change," she said. "We'd been in Kelso our whole lives. We have a lot of family in Rainier. Practically our whole street is family."
Brittany said she loves living in Rainier.
"Growing up in Kelso, the other kids called me names," she said. "In Rainier, I've been more open about the whole thing and the other students have been so accepting. Everyone befriended me and thought is was cool to have a fake eye.
When I first moved here, kids would always ask me to take it out."
And she did, much to their delight.
Close friend and teammate Jennifer Hinkle said the other Rainier students thought Brittany and her prosthetic eye were an "awesome" combination.
"We think it's amazing she only has one eye and can be as good as everyone else," she said. "Nobody saw it as a bad thing. It's actually really cool."
Brittany's boyfriend, Carl Schiedler, is a 2007 Rainier graduate attending Lower Columbia College. He is amazed that strangers, such as the Warrenton students, can be so cruel. He said they were just trying to get into Brittany's head, but got too personal.
Hinkle said those students did the same thing last season. A whole year to think about it and the best insult they could come up with was "one eye?"
"The Warrenton students didn't really affect her," Hinkle said. "It motivated her to play better and shut them up."
Schiedler said most people get to know Brittany and forget about her eye.
"I forget, too," he said. "You can't tell, especially since the last surgery."
Brittany said having teammates willing to stick up for her means a lot. It's one of the benefits of being a Columbian.
"We all have each others' backs," Hinkle said. "Brittany is a really good player. She's used to it. We accepted it and moved on."
Close-knit Columbians
Brittany has been playing basketball since the first grade. She said the biggest problem on the court is her lack of depth perception, so judging the distance between the ball and the basket can by tricky.
"I have to depend on muscle memory when I'm shooting," she said. "And I have to be on the left side to get an open view of the whole court."
Schiedler reminded her that
when shooting right-handed layins, she loses sight of the backboard.
"No, that's when I shoot left-handed layins," she teased her boyfriend, pointing to her left eye. "It's this eye I can't see out of."
Brittany said the Rainier players are close, on the court and off.
"I've never seen a team as close as this one," she said. "Moving to Rainier was the best thing I've ever done."
Part of the cohesiveness of the Rainier basketball team comes from the efforts of head coach Doug Knox and assistant Darren Schwegler.
"Practices are laid-back and we all have fun, especially Knox and Darren," Brittany said. "They're the most comical coaches I've ever seen."
Having fun at practice seems to be working for the Columbians. The team is 15-0, 6-0 in the Lewis and Clark 3A League and ranked fifth in the state.
Mollee Schwegler and a group of juniors have been playing tournament basketball together since the fifth grade. That doesn't stop them from allowing Brittany and the other players to become official members of a group they affectionately call the "Hoop Chicks."
Schwegler is often the high scorer for Rainier, usually followed by Brittany. On Saturday, however, Brittany's 17 points topped all scorers.
"Brittany is a great fit for us, and we're a great fit for her," Knox said. "She brings great energy to our team and she is a defensive catalyst."
Knox said the 5-foot-6 guard never wants to come out of the game.
"She plays hard - 100 percent all of the time," he said. "She's a remarkable kid. We really enjoy her."
Have fun, work hard
Knox said there are times when Brittany will say she didn't see a player coming on the court. She misses some passes, too, but no more than anyone else.
"It doesn't happen a whole lot. Usually we don't think anything of it. She shoots some 3-pointers, more than I'd like," Knox said. "And sometimes she gets too close to the basket to shoot. She's doing a much better job at pulling up and shooting the jumper. Her strength is taking off, running the lanes and making those layins."
Knox said he tries to stress to all of his players when to have fun and when to be serious.
"We like to have fun. We play music and joke and laugh at practice," he said. "But we want the girls to be all business when they get the ball and take the court. This is a special year for us and we'd like to do something special with it."
The Columbians try to lengthen their winning streak tonight at home against Neah-Kah-Nie. The varsity game starts between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m., depending on when the JV game ends.
In addition to basketball, Brittany is active in the leadership program at Rainier Junior/Senior High School. She plans to attend LCC next year in the nursing program.
She's not sure if she'll play basketball at LCC. It depends on how demanding her classes are and whether the Lady Devils' coaches are interested.
For now, she's happy being a part of such a successful team.
"This is a good environment for her," Hinkle said. "And we're glad she moved over here."
Janine Manny is a sports correspondent for The Daily News. She can be reached at sports@tdn.com
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