Alabama Adapted
How Alabama's Bailey Moody Turned a 'Really Hard Thing' into Championship Triumphs
Bailey Moody leaves Dubai this week with another medal around her neck. This time, a bronze with Team USA at the IWBF World Basketball Championships.
It's nothing new for the Alabama wheelchair basketball player. The sport has now allowed her to win multiple medals across five continents, including a bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. She's also won three national titles with the Crimson Tide. But none of this would be possible without a cancer diagnosis a decade ago that resulted in the amputation of her right leg.
"I wouldn't change any of the things that I've been through," Moody told BamaCentral. "Because I really would not be where I am, and I wouldn't have the platform that I do, and I wouldn't have the opportunities that I do have now without being an amputee and having lost my leg."
Life-changing diagnosis
Bailey Moody
Moody grew up the daughter of two collegiate athletes. Her mom Tiffany Moody played soccer at Auburn, and her dad Patrick Moody played baseball at the Citadel.
Bailey and her four younger siblings played sports from a young age. Her parents also had their children get involved in other things like drama and playing the piano and other musical instruments.
"I don't think sports was always something that we envisioned our kids excelling at," Patrick told BamaCentral. "We just want them to find their passions. Really just finding your passions and what God created you for is where we want our kids to put their time. We want them to be the best people they can be. For some of them, that happens to be sports."
And from around five years old, sports, particularly basketball, was one of the things Bailey excelled at. Patrick played hockey in the winter time, and Tiffany played basketball, so she always coached Bailey's teams.
"I've always been very sports-minded and athletic," Bailey said. "I played every sport under the sun growing up, and it just always kept coming back to basketball."
However, at 10 years old, Bailey started experiencing severe knee pain in her right knee that would only flare up when she was doing something active. Because of that, they initially thought it might just be growing pains or a sports-related injury.
But when the pain began to wake her up in the middle of the night and lump started to form on her knee, Bailey's aunt who was a physical therapist recognized that it was more than a sports injury.
After an X-ray, MRI and biopsy, the Moodys had a diagnosis: osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer.
"From there, I was basically propelled as a 10-year-old into chemotherapy and doctor's appointments and all of the things involving fighting cancer and not involving being a kid," Bailey said.
The treatment would last about eight months total with a very important amputation decision in the middle— 10 weeks of chemotherapy, surgery to remove the tumor and then 20 more weeks of chemo.
Growing up in a Christian household, Bailey relied on her faith throughout this time with verses like James 1:2-3, which talk about considering trials joy because they produce perseverance.
"We understand that suffering is not because God is mad at us or that he's punishing us in any way," Patrick said. "It’s just part of being living in a broken world, it brings suffering. But what suffering also does is, it brings clarity to your purpose, brings clarity to your life, simplifies things.
“I never found anyone in our family pleading with God or trying to make deals with him or trying to really necessarily understand why this has happened. But it’s more, how do you find joy in it?”
"I just want to play basketball"
Bailey Moody
After the diagnosis, Bailey's parents were focused on one thing: her survival. In order to get there, they were presented with three choices involving her knee. Because of how aggressively childhood cancer is treated, chemotherapy alone wasn't an option.
"It’s a really cruel process that families like us had to go through," Patrick said. "Because as soon as you get a diagnosis, you're fighting for her life. You're watching her suffer. And in the middle of all that, you have to also contemplate a life-changing surgery along with fighting for her life."
The first option was a total knee replacement. This would have allowed Bailey to keep her right leg, but it would have severely limited her mobility. She would have had to live a life with a leg full of metal.
Second, she could have an above-knee amputation performed on her leg. Third and lastly, the doctors could perform a procedure called a rotationplasty where the upper part of the leg is removed, and the lower part of the leg is rotated 180 degrees and attached to the femur. So the ankle is basically rotated and lifted to become the knee, allowing for a prosthesis to be attached at the spot. This option would give Bailey the opportunity to continue her active lifestyle, and most importantly, continue to play basketball.
According to Bailey, a lot of doctors don’t present it as an option, especially to girls, just because of how radical it is. But her parents did a lot of research and presented Bailey with the options. Even though she was just 10 years old, Tiffany and Patrick wanted Bailey involved in the decision.
"We realized that although radical, very rare and forever changing her life, was probably the best option, but we wanted her to make that decision," Patrick said. "She immediately chose the rotationplasty and even said, ‘Why did you save the best for last?' when we walk through all the different options."
The decision was easy for Bailey. In all her conversations with her doctors, getting back to basketball was on the forefront of her mind.
"My whole goal was to get back to basketball and sports and also to get back to being able to have an active lifestyle that the other options just wouldn't have given me," she said.
Getting back on the court
Bailey Moody
Even after the procedure, Bailey continued to play standup sports through middle school. She even played regular volleyball through her freshman year of high school.
But as Bailey got into high school, it became more and more difficult to keep up in basketball with people playing with two totally functional legs.
“No matter how hard I worked, it was just so much energy to get all the way down to the end of the court just have to turn around and come back again," Bailey said.
So her parents started looking into adapted athletics. They tracked down gold-medal winning volleyball Paralympian Lora Webster, who also had a rotationplasty performed on one of her legs. Webster has now played in five straight Paralympic Games dating back to Athens in 2004. The Moodys connected with her and had a conversation about what life and sports could be like after having the surgery.
"Lora kept making comments, ‘I never would have had this opportunity if this hadn’t happened to me,'" Patrick said. "And and that was really sort of an idea that there's a lot of places this could go if she [Bailey] decided she wanted to play volleyball or basketball or whatever she wanted to do. It was that connection that realized there’s a whole other world out there that we should be paying attention to.”
When Bailey and her parents learned about the opportunities for traveling the world with adapted sports, Bailey was all ears. Her parents found a wheelchair basketball team in the metro Atlanta area equivalent to a travel ball team, and she was hooked.
“As soon as I got on the chair, I fell in love," Bailey said. "And I just started to progress from there.”
She started playing with the wheelchair team in seventh grade. There weren't a lot of programs like this around the country. Bailey had to drive about an hour each way for practice, but some players were driving in from other states hours away. So the team would practice for three hours on Saturdays, and the rest of the practice was on their own.
She got to go to a Team USA developmental camp as a sophomore in high school. And that's when the dominoes started to fall that led to an international career with Team USA and the opportunity to play in college at Alabama.
Converting from orange and blue to crimson and white
Bailey Moody and teammates after winning the national title
Alabama Adapted Athletics
"I grew up a die hard Auburn fan– everything I had was orange and blue.”
Bailey grew up going to Auburn sporting events, hearing about her mom’s playing days with the Tigers and wearing Tiffany's Auburn T-shirts. In high school, she was sure she wasn't going to come to Alabama because of her Auburn upbringing.
"You grow up with your rival school thinking it’s some dumpy place," Bailey said. "I came here, and I fell in love immediately.”
Alabama women's wheelchair basketball head coach Ryan Hynes, who is also an assistant coach for Team USA, said Bailey was one of the biggest recruits he was going after.
"We brought in a really important class that year with Bailey," Hynes told BamaCentral. "But she was she was a really hard recruit that I had to work for, just because I knew like family background, there's a lot of Auburn somewhat turning the tide there in our favor.
"I just kind of explained what we had, my vision for her in the future and why I thought that Alabama was going to be a great fit for us, but even more so a great fit for her. And I think she's made a great decision, and she's been a great addition for the team here. And yeah, I couldn't imagine the team without Bailey Moody on it right now.”
Patrick said the family was open to wherever she felt led to go throughout the recruiting process, but Alabama checked all the boxes. It was close enough to home in Georgia that her family was just a short drive away for games, and there was academic and athletic support. The turning point for her dad was the tour with the Capstone Men and Women at Alabama. The Moodys’ tour guide treated the adapted athletics just like any other winning sport on campus.
"Which I think is a testament to what the university has done to elevate these programs and support them," Patrick said. "And so getting know the program and understanding the university’s view—by the time we left, it was clear that that was exactly where she needed to be.”
Wheelchair basketball is still a growing sport collegiately, so Alabama is the only school in the country that has a full facility dedicated to adapted athletics with an arena, training rooms and weight room specifically modified to meet the needs of the athletes.
While at Alabama, Bailey has been a part of three national championship teams, including the 2023 title that was won in Tuscaloosa. She said the championships are her favorite memories, but she also enjoys getting to be teammates with people from different countries and learning their cultures.
Throughout and before her Crimson Tide career, Bailey has still been able to play internationally with Team USA, including the World Championships in Dubai this month. She's played in the Parapan American Games, the Paralympics in Tokyo and the Americas Cup in Brazil winning gold, silver and bronze medals along the way.
"When I tell my story, the full circle thing of feeling like I lost basketball to getting to play basketball again speaks to the fact that a lot of times really, really, really hard circumstances can bring about the greatest blessings and opportunities that wouldn't have come about if things had been easy, or things had been the way that you think they would have been or should have been," Bailey said. "Really, really amazing opportunities can come from really, really hard things."
