Emma Balsiger is Smiling Through the Pain
She's a Whiz Kid and Dead-Eye 3-point shooter, but there is more than meets the eye with the Franklin senior on and off the court.
The future of Emma Balsiger’s basketball career was at a crossroads as she waited for the results in a familiar place: the doctor’s office. By that point, the rising Franklin senior had dealt with the same nagging injury on three separate, albeit consistent occasions. At the end of her freshman, sophomore, and junior years, she broke her right foot in the same place, the fourth metatarsal.
That pesky right foot.
If the foot is broken again, she’s done—no more basketball. This makes sense, considering the constant cycle of playing through pain, followed by weeks in a boot, only to rehab and be right back where she found herself in the Summer of 2024, in a doctor’s office waiting on results.
The decision to potentially leave the sport with which she has a love-hate relationship is made easier because she does not need basketball.
Her future is well mapped out in more ways than one. She is an excellent student, so much so that saying she is an excellent student is an understatement. She boasts a 4.52 GPA1 and has scholarship opportunities at just about every top academic institution in the country, from MIT to the well-known Ivy League schools.
Her mind was made up, she told her head coach where she stood, and her parents cared far more about her possible future in medicine than basketball.
But, and there is always a but, she’s one of the best female prospects in the Borderland region, which spans from El Paso, Texas, to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and encompasses 46 high school programs—public, private, and charter. This isn’t your average high school athlete playing out their final athletic glory years.
Since her freshman year she has received attention from Division I programs like SMU, Columbia, Yale, Cornell, NMSU, Texas State, and St. Bonaventure. Playing through pain came with its merits. As a junior, she broke the Franklin girls’ basketball program record for 3-pointers made in a single season with 81, and she did so while missing four games.
Success aside, it was a decision made easier by being done with compartmentalizing pain to a degree unknown by some of her coaches. Since the end of eighth grade, Balsiger has played for the West Texas Blazers, a well-known El Paso-based AAU program that plays and wins on the national circuit.2 The coaching staff was shocked to hear about her foot, let alone the idea of her playing through pain.
“She played a whole club season on a fractured foot,” said Bob Jones, West Texas Blazers Co-Founder. “Yes, I said what I said. You can fact-check this, she played a whole season on a partially fractured foot. We didn’t know.”
“Keep in mind, our setting is intense, high-level coaching, it is intense,” Jones added. “During all of this, she’s getting her ass chewed [and coached hard]. And she doesn’t tell us one time, ‘Hey coach my foot is messed up.’ Not one time and we play high-level games against high-level prospects. It goes back to her toughness and will to win.”
“She didn’t really tell us how much it actually hurt,” said Heather Balsiger, Emma’s mother. “We didn’t realize it was actually broken until we took her to an orthopedic specialist; the pain never quite went away, and it would swell all the time.”
Winning and toughness aside, a family-instilled value of loyalty and a strong personal pride in being reliable helped push Balsiger through a tumultuous three-year stretch of pain management.
But everyone has their breaking point.
So, there was the dilemma: move on from basketball and focus solely on academics or continue playing IF healthy.
The results?
The right foot held up.
The fix?
Better footwear plus regimented rehabilitation by Paris Wall, a certified strength and conditioning specialist based in East El Paso.3
Heather Balsiger reached out to Wall asking for help with a specific program that would strengthen all the muscles around the foot, ankle, legs, and core to compensate. It helps to have an anatomist for a mother45 and a specialist like Wall who has a client list boasting some of the best athletes in the region.6
So far, there is less pain, more range of motion, and no signs of reinjury.
One less thing to compartmentalize…
A mental disorder can be exactly how it sounds, disordering. Depending on the condition, severity, and acknowledgment life can vary between insufferable to manageable with positive aspects.
Conditionality and severity provide the bulk of context around managing any disorder, but the ability to acknowledge the problem tells the real story of how life is going to go for those impacted.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in every eight people in the world live with a mental disorder.7 Although buzzwords like mental health have become more commonplace in society writ large, the stigma attached to it still constrains assessments, diagnoses, and treatment options.
In daycare, isolated from her peers, Emma was afraid to socialize or come into physical contact with others. One day at Flying Colors Learning Center, Emma sneezed, causing an internal fear of spreading germs. In a panic, she promptly got up and apologized to everyone in the classroom.
This wasn’t the first time Emma’s internalized fears played out in a public setting.
Her teacher called her mother, which prompted a subsequent doctor’s visit.
At the age of four, Emma was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Although females are slightly more likely to be diagnosed with OCD than their male counterparts, early onset before the age of 10 for females is less common. 89
Dealing with OCD most of her life, Emma knows all about her conditionality and its severity, but she nor her family struggle to acknowledge it, let alone stigmatize it.
“I’ve never ever ever been ashamed of it,” Emma said emphatically. “Nobody is perfect; everybody has issues.”
Studies have found that disorders like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors are deeply stigmatized on a societal level. So much so that there is considerable incentive for those dealing with those disorders to conceal and disregard treatment due to stigmatization.10
“We’re not embarrassed about it. I don’t think mental health is something people should be embarrassed about, especially when it [has its positives]. She’s never had below a 97 on anything in her life grade-wise, and I think part of that is OCD. So it has its usefulness, too,” Heather Balsiger said with a chuckle and smile.
The latter statement by Heather Balsiger is important to note. In addition to getting her daughter assessed, diagnosed, and treated at an early age, it allowed the family to gain a literacy for the disorder. Moreover, there was a silver lining: the disorder can have some positive utility if acknowledged and managed.11
If you talk to anyone who knows Emma, coaches, teammates, family, or friends, you will hear two overlapping adjectives describing her personality. She is intelligent beyond her years and self-aware. The great debate is about where that intelligence comes from and who should take credit for those qualities.
“Yeah, it’s not [commonplace],” said Franklin girl’s basketball Head Coach David Chavez referring to Emma’s intelligence and self-awareness. “If we knew 100 percent what falls into that we’d be implementing it with our students, players, sons, daughters, and so on. I’m sure the parenting had a huge role. She’s been guided really well by her parents and I think some of it is innate through life experiences.”
“[Her intelligence] is definitely challenging. It basically forces you to be a better coach or teacher, whatever the case is,” Chavez added.
“I wouldn’t say it’s intimidating but I would definitely say it’s very challenging,” said Bob Jones. “What you’re saying, how you’re saying it, has to be correct. It’s actually great to have around because she will keep you on your P’s and Q’s for sure. She’s not going to let you half step, which is good. We actually enjoy it because she made us smarter individuals as well. A kid like that will make sure you are on your P’s and Q’s when explaining things. If it don’t make sense or if she doesn’t understand she is definitely going to let you know. It’s worked well for us.”
“She’s just always been very mature, very socially intelligent, and aware of the people around her,” Heather Balsiger said. “That just comes from within and we can’t take any credit for that, that’s just Emma.”
It seems that humility runs in the family because no one is willing to take credit. Is it the OCD, education, coaches, parenting, or unexplained innate qualities? The answer isn’t definitive, but it is probably all the above.
“I really do owe it all to my parents; they’ve always been understanding,” Emma said. “I was obviously going through something very hard for a four-year-old to figure out at the time. So, my parents have always shown me empathy and understanding. They don’t understand what I’m feeling, but they understand that I am feeling something.”
“She has had to deliberately self-reflect since she was little,” Heather added. “It’s been work; it was not accidental.”
Although a diagnosis of OCD is not a defining characteristic of personality, it can shape major plot points of one’s life, for better or for worse. In Emma’s case, it’s been largely for the better, but that is because of the work. It always comes back to the work.
The scouting report is out on Emma Balsiger. She is a shooter. A dead-eye 3-point specialist that you can’t leave open. Her ability to fill it up from the perimeter has always been a well-known quality of her game.
She found her spot on the floor as a freshman because she had an uncanny ability to shoot from well beyond the arc and hasn’t slowed down since. She shot 40 percent from three as a sophomore12 and set the school record for 3-pointers made in a season as a junior. If she played a full season (healthy) as a junior, she might have finished with 100-plus 3-pointers made.
But how did it start? If you ask Emma, she might sheepishly roll her eyes and give credit to her father, Joe Balsiger, an El Paso native and former DI tennis player at Indiana University. Joe was the “shot crafter” of one of the more consistent jump shots in the Borderland.
“Obviously, my dad has a lot to do with it,” Emma said. “I wouldn’t have known what to do if it wasn’t for him.”
However, the irony of the development was that Emma was never allowed to shoot threes. Joe Balsiger was adamant about his daughter developing proper shooting mechanics at a distance where said mechanics could be properly maintained.
Arguably just as influential in developing Balsiger into one of the Borderland’s best shooters is who she played with and against as a kid.
One day, Emma, a soon-to-be middle schooler, was outside playing on the Franklin High School blacktops. By happenstance, Joe Patterson, Founder of Express Athletics, was there, too. Always keeping an eye out for kids to recruit for his team, the Franklin area was a familiar place.
To his surprise, he saw Emma playing a one-on-one game against a boy he was scouting. Impressed by her ability to make the boy work, his focus quickly moved to Balsiger. So much so that Emma became his next recruit for his 3x3 team.
With Emma in the fold, Coach Patterson expressed much of the same sentiments around shooting that her father did. If you can’t shoot it properly from deep, you can’t shoot from that range.
Not too long after joining, it became apparent that Emma was the team’s most willing passer and, more specifically, best two-handed passer. She was strong enough to make cross-court passes, so naturally, it suggested she could shoot from a further distance.
One of Emma’s early core memories playing for Patterson and Express was when she was open out on the wing. Instead of instructing her to pass or step in, Coach Patterson adamantly told her to shoot from three.
She did.
And she made it.
One-for-one on career 3-point attempts.
Balsiger would become a staple on a 3x3 Express boys team that featured future elite Borderland prospects Jayden Leverett, Donovan Mozer, and Lenny Washington. All three now play and star for Chapin, Canutillo, and Organ Mountain High School, respectively.
Outside of some growth spurts, or lack thereof, the descriptions of Emma’s game have not changed.
“Sometime around my 5th grade year, my first memories were playing against Emma in El Paso,” said Washington. “She played with the Express boys team, which is rare to see a girl play with boys, but even more playing at the level she was against them. Playing against her, she was a lights-out shooter and would somehow always be open, which made it a pain to play Express with a shooter like Emma on the team. Then the following year, I started playing with Express and had the privilege of having a person who I could find and would knock a shot down almost 100 percent of the time.”
Despite the physical differences, Balsiger found an obvious role to fill as a shooter. Could she outrun, jump, or exert herself physically over her male competitors? No. But she could space the floor and punish defenders for not guarding or closing out on her.
Some things never change.
Between stories, the stats, and a deep tape study, there is plenty more to say about Balsiger as a 3-point shooter, but it would arguably undersell her best quality.
“She does a great job of understanding why we do things, and I think that separates her from a lot of players,” Coach Chavez said. “A lot of players might have some basketball IQ, but they don’t necessarily understand why they are doing things. They’ll do them because their coaches tell them to. But if you talk to her, she is very self-aware of what she is doing on the court. That is priceless, and it makes it easy to coach her. It’s not about telling her what to do and then explaining why. She a lot of times will inherently understand why we are doing certain things.”
Shocker, the A+ student reads and understands the game at another level, but it goes deeper than the X’s and O’s. Her social and emotional intelligence on the court rounds out her comprehensive basketball IQ.
It’s 2022, and the West Texas Blazers are playing in a highly competitive 16U tournament in Dallas, Texas. The Blazers are squaring off against San Antonio Finest, an elite AAU program that has an assembly line for former, current, and future DI players.13
Top DI coaches, scouts, and national recruiting sites were all there to watch.
Emma, a freshman at the time, turned the ball over one possession and proceeded to walk back on defense. Bob Jones, who was coaching the 16U girls' team at the time, was dismayed by the effort level. Jones proceeded to rip into Emma, letting her hear it in front of everyone. He went to a place his star player had never seen, so much so that he thought it would be the last game she played for West Texas. Jones was sure he had gone too far as he lamented to his assistant coach.
“Do you not see all these coaches here? Like, come on,” Jones said, recounting the incident.
“But she responded so well, and that is when I knew she was going to be a great player,” he added. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and any other regular player or parent would have had a problem with it, shut down, and quit. And do you see where those players are now? They’re not playing college ball, I can tell you that.”
“I just remember, ‘Oh my God, he’s right.’ Which I hate sometimes in the moment,” Balsiger said, recounting her side of the story. “I knew I needed to show it to him like I had to one-up him. Like he’s right but I’m still going to be better, then I’m going to be right.”
“I think if your coaches don’t yell at you, are they really invested in you?” Balsiger asked out loud. “I’ve always respected him, but maybe he respected me more after that. But I’ve never asked [about that situation].
The moral of the story is that Balsiger is seemingly not difficult to coach. Whether it be an effort-related note or game tactics, she rarely needs to hear it more than once. That said, the maturation process that has led to her being named co-captain along with fellow senior Camryn De Avila was not quick and easy.
Although she was a day one varsity player as a freshman, it was challenging to get Emma to step out of a preconceived role.
“Her freshman year, she was seen as the baby of the group and tried to fit in and play her role,” Coach Chavez said. Balsiger was one of two freshmen on the 2021-22 Franklin girls’ varsity squad that went 25-6 and 14-0 in district play.14
Possibly a side effect of playing up in age her whole life is that Balsiger was never directly needed to lead, even if her skillset and overall quality necessitated a bigger role.
“Getting her out of that mentality that she has a specific role on the team [was a challenge],” Chavez added. “As a freshman, she was probably our best shooter, but she would refuse to shoot sometimes because she felt that as a freshman, she needed to fill a certain role. You would think most players want to shoot and go play for themselves. With Emma, it was kind of the opposite.”
Albeit still an unselfish player who is willing to get off the ball, Balsiger has no problems shooting the ball these days. As a junior, she was Franklin’s co-leading scorer and second on the team in field goal attempts. She had 12 games with 10 or more 3-point attempts and had the same amount of games with four or more 3-pointers made in a game.15
As they say, shooters do shoot, but not necessarily at the beginning, on or off the court for Balsiger.
“A lot of it was fear,” Emma said, recounting her trepidation using her voice on previous teams with set hierarchies in the locker room. “Now, I can contribute in more ways than one. You can speak, point out mistakes, and it doesn’t have to be this negative conflict.”
Now, in late-game situations, Balsiger will be the first to speak in the huddle and her teammates are open ears.
“When we were in Dallas in the Rockhill game up by one, she brought us together and told us to keep calm, keep it relaxed,” said Camryn De Avila, Franklin’s Co-Captain. “If you get a rebound, look for your guards, whoever is up top, and don’t freak out. That helped out because those girls in Dallas are big, and we don’t have that much height. [Her message] kept us level-headed.”
Franklin beat Rockhill 49-48; Balsiger scored a game-high 20 points and hit five 3-pointers.
“If you know what to do, why not share it?” Balsiger said. “If I don’t know what to do, I want to be led.”
Her overall feelings about being a team leader are almost indifferent to what assumptions come with the title. You no longer get the sense of a player trying to portray a role. She’s no longer the quiet stand-in-the-corner freshman waiting her turn, but she certainly isn’t the domineering senior monopolizing the offense to her benefit.
The 2024-25 Franklin girl’s basketball team is a unique blend of new and returning talent. Allison De La O and Isabella Lee are two of the best 2028 prospects in the city, starting as freshmen. Kyla Winfield, Danielle Escobedo, and De Avila are all returnees from last season who provided specific skillsets to round out the group.
Of course, chief among them is Balsiger, the longest-tenured player with a resume of wins, accolades, and performances that stack higher than any other player on the team.
But if you ask Balsiger’s teammates about how she leads, it’s just Emma being Emma.
“The person you see is the person you get,” said De Avila, who has played with Balsiger since their middle school days at Hornedo. “She doesn’t switch up off the court. She’s a very genuine, bubbly, and just a super good teammate and person.”
Watching Balsiger’s body language during a game, much of the same is true. She’s intentionally positive with her teammates and isn’t afraid to crack a joke or smile. But don’t be fooled by the positivity, the smiling, and the joke-cracking.
“Sometimes her competitive nature can kind of scare people because she is very competitive,” De Avila said. “That can be intimidating just because if you don’t meet that energy and are not that competitive, it can be a lot, and people can misunderstand where that comes from.”
It might not manifest in the form of brutal trash-talking or overly demonstrative displays of emotion, but there is an interesting juxtaposition between the bubbly teammate and the ultra-competitor who wants to win.
Emma Balsiger wants to win at everything.
“Win district,” Balsiger said with simplicity when asked about her senior season goals. “To be honest, and I know this is going to sound so cliche, but I am so ok with having zero points if we win. I want Franklin to win district and make it far in the playoffs. I just want to win and so that’s the goal.”
Shooters shoot.
Leaders lead.
Winners win.
Emma Balsiger is doing all three in her final season.
Balsiger’s GPA could be higher than 4.6 by the end of the school 2024-25 school year.