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Grayslake's talented Hanson aims to simply get healthy.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Patricia Babcock McGraw

There's really no time for pity parties.

Doug Hanson has therapy to do. He's got teammates to support and he's still got at least a little bit of baseball to play.

Being busy has been Hanson's much-needed diversion from a reality that, as the movie said, bites. At least it does at the moment.

"I just can't believe it sometimes," Hanson said. "I try not to show it, but inside, I can get pretty (ticked off) about it. I had a lot of big goals, a lot of things I planned on doing. But everything just pretty much fell through."

Injuries can do that, even to the best athletes.

For Hanson, they've wreaked absolute havoc on his senior year.

A superstar-caliber athlete in three sports at Grayslake, Hanson had every reason to anticipate a senior year for the ages after having a junior year that was nearly that special. Hanson earned the rare distinction of earning all-conference honors after each season last year - for football, basketball and baseball.

As a junior, Hanson was drawing interest from Big Ten-caliber schools after racking up dozens of tackles at middle linebacker to help the football team earn its first playoff berth in more than a decade. He moved straight into basketball and quickly established himself as one of the top scorers on the team. Then in baseball, he rolled up 91 strikeouts in 59 innings and pitched a gem in leading Grayslake...

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