If Walseth could have frozen time, she would have during her freshman year of high school. Up until that point she had led, in her opinion, "the life of every other kid." Walseth's father had coached her in every sport she had ever played. She got along well with her older sister, and if there ever were to be a model of what an ideal family situation should be, one would not have to look further than the Walseth family of Bloomington, Minn.

Then, for the first time in her life, Walseth had to face adversity.

She was forced to leave the only life she had ever known and move with her family to suburban Hartford, Conn.

Walseth returned home from her first day at her new high school with tears in her eyes because she just "did not fit in."

Her life was back in Minnesota, while she was stuck in Connecticut.

"I don't know if that was a defining moment in my life but it helped me grow up," Walseth said. "When I was crying my mom asked me if I wanted to go back to Minnesota and live with my grandmother, and I thought about it and basically I said to myself, 'How selfish would I be to go back? No, I am going to stay here and learn to be tough.' "

Tough may be the best way to describe Walseth's high school basketball career.

She was tough to defend.

She was tough to score upon.

She was tough to stop -- that is until injury made the girl with the white ribbon in her hair impossible to see on the basketball court.

After her first day following surgery to repair her torn anterior cruciate ligament, Walseth was convinced she would never walk again. The high-profile collegiate programs suddenly became uninterested in her services, as the whispers of doubt began to surface.

"The knee injury pointed out to her that a lot of kids think they are infallible, that they can't be touched," Dan Walseth, Maren's father, said. "I think what it did was give her a greater appreciation of the sport and helped her see things more clearly."

But Penn State coach Rene Portland did not need the aid of a white ribbon to see the talent Walseth possessed.

Even after Walseth's injury, Portland was able to look beyond the scars of the past and focus on the intestinal fortitude the surgery instilled.

"When you cross the lines of the basketball court, the nice kid has to go away," Portland said. "Everybody likes (Walseth) but now she has left that outside the court. She needed to have an edge and now she has an edge."

That edge has helped turn around the Penn State program. Averaging 7.2 points per contest, Walseth is the Lions' fifth-leading scorer and provides a physical presence in the paint that gives Penn State one of the most dominant frontcourts in the Big Ten.

She has been an intricate part of a turnaround which now has Penn State primed for its first NCAA Tournament berth since the 1995-96 season. For Walseth, life once again is back to the way it was during her freshman year in high school -- perfect.

But as her injury has taught her, Walseth realizes maintaining this status quo takes work.

"Last year, I wasn't happy that we didn't make the Big Dance. That was not something I enjoyed," Walseth said. "But I am not going to settle and give up on it. Looking back, I see those parallels in my life that if you keep working hard things will be alright."

Portland has described the upcoming Big Ten Women's Basketball Tournament as "a magical weekend" in which the unpredictable can happen -- and usually does. Penn State is a testament to this assumption as it reached the tournament's championship game last year as the No. 7 seed.

But despite all of this uncertainty, Portland can rely on one constant.

The girl with the white ribbon in her hair will be there, trying to turn last year's whisper into this year's roar.