GENOA - The corner of Myers Road and Route 34 in Genoa is a familiar one for Kathy Besemer, but for reasons she'd like to forget.

Besemer was standing in her kitchen on November 27 when she received the call that every parent dreads.

Her daughter Danielle, a third baseman for the Southern Cayuga softball team, had been in a car accident.

And unlike the one she walked away from less than three months earlier at the same location, Danielle wouldn't be walking again for weeks.

The crash left the active 17-year-old with a pelvis broken in two places, a fractured rib and a punctured lung - injuries that might have kept some players on the bench permanently.

Danielle, however, had other ideas. After a painful and exhausting recovery, the senior is back on the bag for the Chiefs, much to her own surprise.

"I couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't move my leg," Danielle said. "I couldn't roll over, I couldn't do anything."

Danielle doesn't remember much about the accident, but Kathy remembers it like it was yesterday.

She drove by the mangled car Danielle was riding in before she reached the ambulance. Once she saw her daughter in the rescue vehicle, she was able to breathe a slight sigh of relief.

"The helicopter hadn't arrived yet, so I got in the ambulance with her," said Kathy, who still tears up when she remembers the accident. "Once I could see that she could wiggle her hands and her feet, I felt a lot better."

Obviously, she was still concerned.

"They pretty much knew her pelvis had been broken when they got her out of the car," she added. "It was pretty emotional."

Danielle was airlifted to University Hospital in Syracuse, where she spent the next 12 days.

"She was in such agonizing pain that they put her on a morphine pump," Kathy said. "In the emergency room, the morphine didn't even touch it. The first week when she was on the pump they tried to keep her sedated a lot of the time to keep the pain down. If they moved her at all, it would be agonizing. I think that was one reason she didn't remember anything until she got to the rehabilitation unit."

When her initial five-day hospital stay was over, Danielle had a metal plate and four screws in her hip. For the next week, she had to learn to walk again in physical therapy.

At that point, softball didn't seem likely.

"I didn't think I would be able to play when I was in the hospital," she said. "I didn't even think I'd be walking."

Kathy was optimistic.

"I told her that I thought with physical therapy that she would be able to play softball," Kathy said. "She got mad and said, 'Don't talk to me about it. I don't want to hear anything about it.'"

Danielle voiced her concerns to friend and teammate Johanna Ryan, with whom she had played softball since grade school.

"She just seemed really bummed about it, but she was being honest with herself," Ryan said.

Ryan has firsthand knowledge of recovering from a serious injury. On the JV squad, she shattered her elbow and has 11 screws and two plates in her left arm.

"I know exactly what it's like to go through all that pain," Ryan said. "It's so hard to start again. The fact that she's recovered so quickly is amazing. When I hurt my elbow I had to learn how to use my arm again - I even had to learn how to use my fingers."

While Danielle was at home recuperating, Ryan was one of the friends that kept her company. Kathy was thankful that Danielle's friends took the time to visit.

"We don't live where people can walk to your house," she said. "It's a huge effort for her friends to come and see her, and she had somebody at the house the whole time she was out of school."

Danielle believes her friends' support played a huge part in her recovery as she was progressing in her physical therapy.

"It took me weeks just to get my leg to the side," she said. "But after it got going, it seemed like everything happened really fast and I got better really quickly."

Not fast enough for Danielle, who has been involved in the Drama Club, Chess Club, Adventure Club, Student Council and is the president of the National Honor Society. She missed Ski Club the most.

"I love snowboarding," she said. "I started snowboarding a couple of years ago. I mean, I don't get tricky with it - I don't do anything amazing, but I can keep up with the boys and go down the hill."

Danielle returned to school Feb. 1. She was cleared to return to gym class the following day, but she wasn't allowed to run for another six weeks.

"When we got out to the car we kind of looked at each other and said, 'This means you can play softball,'" Kathy said. "It was pretty exciting because we had talked about it, and then we left a huge space in there because it was too much."

With the doctor's OK, there was still one more person to convince: Chiefs' coach Dave Hewitt. When Hewitt saw Danielle at a basketball game over the winter, he didn't think she would recover in time.

"She wasn't playing, and that was right up through February," Hewitt said. "I saw her in the gym and said, 'She's not playing, there's no way.'"

Though Hewitt was informed by Danielle's teammates, including his daughter Traci, that Danielle would be playing, the first day of practice was still a tough one for the senior.

"I didn't think she was going to make it," Hewitt said. "But you could see the determination."

Danielle decided she wasn't going to miss her senior season.

"It meant everything to me this year," she said. "I've been playing since I was in kindergarten. It's my senior year and I really wanted to make it count."

Danielle's perseverance paid off, and she was on the bag for Southern Cayuga's season opener. Her mobility in the field doesn't seem to be affected; she's only committed four errors.

Hewitt is also confident in her batting abilities, and she regularly bats third or fifth in the lineup. Danielle has a .318 average, has scored six runs and stolen three bases.

There have been a few setbacks. In an early-season game against Groton, Danielle took herself out. She had recently pulled a muscle and attributes the injury to the lost strength in her leg. After watching the Indians got back into the game, she decided she couldn't stay on the bench.

"We had to put her back in," Hewitt said. "It had such an impact on the team. She came up to me and said, 'I have to get back in.'"

Hewitt, who describes Danielle as 'spunky, outgoing and hilarious,' believes she hasn't realized how much she's accomplished.

"I think she's going to look back on the season and be proud," Hewitt said. "She doesn't know it yet, but she will."

While Kathy is happy that her daughter is playing, she's glad the worst is behind her.

"Just to see her do anything excites me everyday," Kathy said. "The softball is just extra."

And Danielle has seemed to come to terms with her accident and her recovery - including the hardware in her hip.

"It's cool to be bionic," she joked.