PRICEVILLE — Danielle Johnson wanted to compete for the junior varsity cheerleading team at Priceville High School in March 2006 as a seventh-grader.Her mother said no.

A year later, some might have wondered if Danielle would consider it again. She doubted herself before telling friends she still wanted to cheer. They encouraged her.

Danielle lost her left foot Memorial Day weekend in a freak personal watercraft accident on Smith Lake during an outing with her father, Lavon “Bama” Johnson. She walked into the gym wearing a prosthesis.

Surgeons at Children's Hospital in Birmingham amputated the leg about 3 inches below the knee three days after Danielle celebrated her 13th birthday.

It was clear the Sunday of the accident, and the water was warm and inviting. She was driving the watercraft and pulling her friend, Bethany Peterson, also 13, on a Big Bertha ski tube as Danielle's father and other adults watched from a pontoon boat nearby.

She stopped the watercraft and reeled Bethany in as they prepared to join the others for lunch. She coiled the rope into the well where she rested her left foot.

The wind had ripped the tube from Bethany's hands, tossing it behind them. As the watercraft continued, the rope, now entangled in Danielle's foot, became taut, abruptly yanking the girls off.

A rescue boat transported her across the lake to an ambulance, which drove her to a medical helicopter about a mile away. When Johnson arrived at the hospital, doctors already had prepped her for surgery.

After six days in the hospital, Danielle had to wait several more weeks for the incision to heal before Biotech Limb and Brace LLC of Birmingham could fit her.

At one point, she said, she thought “everything was just kind of over. I wasn't going to ever get to do anything again. Maybe sports was out of the question.”She got her prosthesis in August, the week before school started.

“I can't say enough good things about her. If something like that happened to me, I would hope I would handle it as well as she seems to be handling it,” Hames said.

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