Brayden Grantham is trying his best to be a two-sport athlete. He's encountered a couple roadblocks that have shortened what normally is four years of competition quite close to half that.

The Red Mountain sophomore - soon to be junior with the 2019-2020 school year reduced to online learning - has seen his first two high school years boil down to a paltry sum of games.

"Well, the count is eight football games and eight baseball games," Grantham's father, Jason, an assistant principal and Mountain Lions' alum in the infancy of Red Mountain in the early 1990s, said. "It's been frustrating to say the least."

Brayden Grantham has been bitten hard by a pair of maladies - a three-pronged knee injury as a freshman and like many others the effects of COVID-19 in the last few days.

Brayden's prep athletic endeavors began as a freshman in fall of 2018. An auspicious beginning. He was a quarterback for the freshman team playing in eight of nine games. He missed the last game of that season due to a strained knee ligament. There is no postseason for lower level sports so after taking it easy for a bit with the knee strain he began preparing for baseball and kept up offseason football workouts.That was January 2019.

With baseball practice officially a couple weeks away, (baseball is his first love) he also took time for football and some seven-on-sevens. Usually prepping at quarterback, he subbed a few plays at wide receiver during one such workout. 

On what would be the last play he participated in for football and baseball 2019, up popped the injury.

"I was running a few routes and on one I cut across the middle," Brayden said. "The ball was thrown a little low and as I tried to catch it the safety dove in and hit my knee."

The contact wasn't harsh, but just right for a brutal injury to ensue. The result was a torn anterior cruciate ligament, torn medial collateral ligament and meniscus tear. 

His Valentine's Day present was surgery to repair all the damage. The first six weeks after surgery entailed no weight-bearing rehab. After that it was a lengthy stretch of rehab.

The injury most definitely has been frustrating," Brayden said. 'Injuries are unexpected. This one was a long one. I lost a year. The hardest thing wasn't rehabbing. The hardest thing was sitting and watching while everyone else practiced and played."

The injury wiped out his first baseball season.The recovery lasted deep into football this past took that away as well. He was cleared to practice the final three weeks of Red Mountain's 6A runner-up football season. He suited up in one game, but did not play - the title game, overtime loss to Liberty at Sun Devil Stadium. The toll from the triple-whammy was no games played in either sport from late October 2018 to Feb. 27 2020 when the current, shortened baseball season began.

A posiitve emerged from his first game, a varsity game where he's a starter in the infield. On that late February afternoon, Brayden produced a game-winner. Not as heroic as most - a walk-off, bases-loaded walk in a 7-6 victory over Mesquite. A good eye at the plate resulted in victory.

"That was fun, but my best memory so far is our win over Mountain Pointe (3-2)," Brayden said. "We were the underdog.  It was such an intense game, and went down to the final pitch."

Brayden's streak of good fortune lasted all of 13 days. Red Mountain's final baseball game before the season was suspended was on March 10, a contest the it moved up the start time a few hours to beat rain. That outcome was a 4-2 win over Perry. At that time there was some optimism the season could be picked up at some point. The corona virus has since flushed the season.

Baseball will occupy a bunch of his free time the next few months. He'll work on strengthening his body and his swing, getting cuts at home with the resources his family affords with dad doing some pitching.

Brayden's future may still be as a two-sport athlete. He's not totally decided yet, but baseball is a certainty.

"I can't get injured again," he said. "I've already missed a lot. It's crazy what's happened. I'm ready to play."