CRANBERRY TWP — Kylie Huffman returns home from practice, grabs two large ice packs from the freezer and places them on her aching knees.

The cartilage that is supposed to cushion them is long gone — a casualty of surgeries on both knees within 10 months to fix a genetic problem with her patella tendons.

The 6-foot-2 senior forward on the Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic girls basketball team thinks about giving up the sport, but something keeps her gritting through the pain and returning, day after day, game after game.

Ice pack after ice pack.

“Sometimes I come home and ice my knees and I want it to be done,” Huffman said. “But I can't. I love it so much.”

Huffman has taken quite a crooked path to get where she is today as one of the key members of a North Catholic team defending a PIAA title.

That winding road has taken her from California, Pa., to Zelienople, from a force on the court as a freshman for California High School to a shell of that player as a sophomore because of the balky knees, and now back again into a force for North Catholic.

Huffman scored her 1,000th career point against Highlands Monday — a validation of her perseverance

“I never thought it would happen,” Huffman said. “I missed part of my sophomore year because of the knees, and I had to sit out every practice and ride a (stationary) bike to keep conditioned. There were things I wanted to do on the court, but just physically couldn't do them as a sophomore.”

Her numbers dropped precipitously because of that. She averaged nearly 16 points and 11 rebounds per game as a freshman at California, but only 11 points and five rebounds as a sophomore.

Then her family moved to Zelienople and she enrolled at North Catholic.

New school. New teammates. New role. Same painful knees.

Ironically, her last game at Cal came against North Catholic in a playoff loss.

In her first season with the Trojanettes last year, Huffman was still recovering and enduring the second arduous year of physical therapy between games and practices.

“At the start of last year, she was kind of a giraffe on roller skates,” said North Catholic coach Molly Rottmann. “But she got better and better and she was a force for us in the playoffs.”

Huffman was a big reason why the Trojanettes made a run to the PIAA Class A championship last season.

It was a completely different experience for her and one she embraced.

“I took on a different role at North Catholic,” Huffman said. “I started as a freshman and did very well kind of at the forefront of the team at Cal. At North Catholic I was another player on the team and I did what we needed. It felt good.”

What the Trojanette's needed was an outside shooter and Huffman provided that.

It was a perfect fit for her as she was still recovering from the knee surgeries and trying to get stronger.

She averaged 8.8 points and 5.8 rebounds last season.

This year, she's been an even bigger force for North Catholic. She scored 23 points in the win Monday.

Huffman, who has already committed to continue her academic and basketball career at Carneige Mellon University, is still trying to round out her game.

That includes mixing it up more in the paint.

She's already doing that.

“It sounds kind of funny, but she's been diving on the floor for loose balls this year,” Rottmann said. “That's a big deal for her with the history of her knees. She's going to the hoop and she's just going to continue to improve. Her inside moves are good and they're graceful, she just isn't used to playing in there yet, and she's still a really good outside shooter. I think she's just going to explode at the next level.”

Huffman is just hoping to further ignite her game right now for a team that moved up to Class 4A and has designs on another state title.

That'll make all those aches in her knees and all those ice packs worth it.

“We do have a bull's-eye on our backs and we're going to get every team's best game,” Huffman said. “We just have to stay humble.

“What I've been through,” Huffman added, “just makes me not take playing for granted and makes me enjoy every minute of it more.”