So when she tore her ACL and her meniscus as a freshman, missing an entire year of her basketball season, the question wasn't just whether she'd recover physically. It was whether she'd come back as herself.

She did. And then some.

Now a sophomore at Du Quoin High School, Aleiya returned to the court this season with something to prove — not to anyone else, really, but to herself.

"I wanted to do as best as I could," she says. "And I wanted to, like, do better because I missed a whole year. I felt like I had a lot that I had to, like, catch up on."

The comeback didn't happen all at once. There was a moment early this past season, during a game at Benton, when Aleiya went down on the same knee. She got up immediately. Said she was fine. But in the same breath: "I was like, I don't know, I could have hurt myself again."

She hadn't. And coach Shawn File told her so after the game.

"You may not realize this," he told her, "but that was really big that you went down, but that you were able to get back up."

It was, he says now, probably the beginning of the real turning point — proof, under actual game pressure, that the knee held. That she held.

By around Christmas, Aleiya says, she felt like herself again.

For Coach File, watching that unfold confirmed something he'd believed from the start. He often uses the acronym "DREAM" to talk about important characteristics to not just sports, but life in general. DREAM stands for — Discipline, Resiliency, Effort, Attitude, Mindset — and he'll tell you that Aleiya lives all five. But it's the R that stands out.

"The resiliency is one that always jumps out at me," he says. "It's very easy for athletes when they get knocked down to just kinda be like, I don't know if I can get back to where I was at."

Aleiya wasn't like that. She did extra work with a trainer. She pushed through in PE. She stayed focused on the goal.

That kind of drive runs in the family. Aleiya's father introduced her to the game early — "when I was three, he just made me start juggling a basketball" — and her family is, as she puts it, "very big on basketball." Her younger brother, a sixth-grader, plays too. The basketball gene runs deep; so does the healthcare one. Her mother is a healthcare worker. Her sister is currently in a nursing program. So when Aleiya talks about wanting a college scholarship to play and a nursing degree to follow, it's a vision that has roots.

"I just kind of want to go from there," she says. "See how far I can go."

Coach File wants her to go far, too. But he's also clear about what matters most right now.

"I want Aleiya to know that she's loved," he says. "That her worth is not coming from what she does with the basketball — that she has a God-given plan for her life."

It's more than a coaching philosophy. File is a licensed minister who has officiated weddings for a few of his former players. He tells them at the start of every season that he wants an invitation to their wedding. His investment in their lives doesn't stop at the final buzzer — or the final game of their high school career.

"My job is to help her be the best basketball player, but also the best human being," he says.

He also tells them to slow down and take it in. Right now, I want Aleiya King to enjoy being a sophomore. Go to the dances, play all of the sports. Because at some point in time, that journey is going to move on."

Aleiya seems to understand that. She plays travel ball with the Illinois Bears, competing as far as Nashville and Louisville. She takes her craft seriously. But when she talks about what she loves most about basketball, it's not the travel or the competition.

"It's very special," she says, "especially because I play basketball with my best friend."

That's the part that lasts.