It wasn’t long ago when ShaRae Mansfield questioned whether seven knee surgeries were worth the pain endured during four years of basketball at Western Kentucky.

Her answer came in a phone call from longtime WKU sports information director Paul Just in July, just a week before Mansfield would undergo knee replacement surgery.

“I questioned whether it was worth sacrificing my body so much,” Mansfield said. “He told me I was inducted and there was no question: It’s more than worth it. I would do it 10 million times over again.”

Mansfield, who lettered four seasons from 1998-2001 and was an All-American as a senior, was inducted alongside John Mutchler and the late Jim Rose as the 27th class into the WKU Athletics Hall of Fame on Saturday morning at E.A. Diddle Arena.

The Louisville native is the eighth Lady Topper basketball player inducted out of the 149 total members.

Mansfield was the first of the three inductees introduced at Saturday morning’s induction bruncheon. Mansfield was selected in the third round of the WNBA Draft by the Houston Comets in 2001, but was released due to injuries. Shortly after, she played for a few months in Israel before deciding to retire for good with ongoing knee complications.

Four of those surgeries came during her time with WKU as a three-time All-Sun Belt Conference First Team selection. By the end of her career, she was the program’s second player to earn 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds.

“I wanted to play,” Mansfield said. “I didn’t care how many surgeries I was having. I did whatever I could to stay on the court.”

She became the first women’s basketball player to be named WKU’s Female Athlete of the Year both her junior and senior seasons.

Mansfield is currently seventh on the all-time scoring list (1,804) and fifth in total rebounds (1,000). The Louisville native averaged 14.2 points and 7.9 rebounds per game in her career.

When those never-ending knee issues finally forced her to give up playing, Mansfield entered what she called a state of “basketball depression” for four years. Like so many other student athletes, her identity was as a basketball player and not much else. She said she had other hobbies in graphic design and photography (she’s currently a freelance wedding photographer), but basketball was her life.

She got back into basketball when WKU coach Michelle Clark-Heard, who was her coach at Manual her junior season, hired her as director of operations for the 2012-13 season, but a coaching change bumped her into an assistant coaching role that season. She went back to the operations position the next year before leaving with health issues from rheumatoid arthritis.

Mansfield said during her speech her goal is to start helping students transition into careers outside of professional sports. She’s currently working on her Ph.D. in business psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

“There’s not as much going into the psychological aspects of putting the ball down,” Mansfield said. “These athletes – I’m telling you I have the research to prove it – go through tremendous psychological processes, especially if they’re like me and can’t go play sports. Their identity for closure occurs. I’m an athlete, I’ve known myself to be an athlete for the last 15 years and now because of my knee, I can’t play basketball anymore.

“They need someone to come in and do personality assessments and find out what they might be good at. What we’re trying to do is career-plan develop and find other things they may be good at to replace the sport. To give them the same feeling, because you’re on this high a lot of times and you’re in a zone and competitive, and if that athlete can find something that means that much to them, they’re going to transition more smoothly.”

John Mutchler, a member of the only undefeated WKU football team from 1963, was inducted despite playing just one season after transferring from Kentucky.

He was an All-American for the 10-0-1 team that won the Ohio Valley Conference championship and Tangerine Bowl. A Paducah native who now resides in Foley, Ala., he was an All-OVC pick and was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year in 1963.

The late Jim Rose was one of the highly regarded players of WKU’s 1971 NCAA Final Four appearance, joining Clarence Glover and the late Jim McDaniels as the third member of that team inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Rose, who passed away in 2009, earned All-American honors as a senior and was a second-round draft pick by the NBA’s Boston Celtics and the ABA’s Memphis Tams. He finished his three-year varsity career with 1,133 points.{&end}