The final year of Ethan Pond’s high school athletic career went up in smoke in a matter of seconds, just a couple weeks after it got started.

The Cary High senior destroyed one of his knees on the opening kickoff of the Imps’ third football game of the season last fall. Pond completely ruptured the anterior cruciate and the medial collateral ligaments and partially tore the lateral collateral ligament and meniscus in his left knee.

“My knee cap was behind my knee,” he said, rather ho-humly four months later. “It was not good.”

As he lay on the field, he knew he wasn’t going to strap on his shoulder pads and wear his No. 8 Cary football jersey again.

He knew he probably wasn’t going to play basketball either.

It was only Aug. 31. School had just started five days earlier. The conference championships he’d hoped to challenge for and the state playoff runs he’d hoped to be a part of were going to happen while he was relegated to an observer and cheerleader.

Flash forward to Friday night.

It’s Senior Night at Cary High, and Pond is among the 10 young men who are making their final appearance at home as a member of the Cary boys’ basketball team.

Rival Apex is the opponent. Cary is playing for its season. The gym is packed. The atmosphere is electric. After the Apex starters are announced, Cary’s come next.

The fifth and final player player introduced for the Imps is a 6-foot-3 forward, wearing No. 40.

It is Ethan Pond.

“I felt like it was something we needed to do to honor him,” said Cary coach Allan Gustafson. “Senior Night is not just for your contribution this year. I feel it’s what you’ve done for the program, and he’s a four-year player. He’s put four years into this program, and he deserved that recognition.”

Gustafson approached Apex counterpart David Neal about giving Pond the opportunity to set foot on the floor, and Neal was all for it.

“I totally respected what he wanted to do,” Neal said. “We didn’t have any problem doing it.”

Pond was hesitant at first, but Gustafson convinced him it was something he wanted to do and it would be worthwhile.

“He decided I needed to do it,” Pond said. “I thought it’d be a good idea, and it’d be a good symbol of coming back.”

So Pond walked out to midcourt and readied himself for the opening tip.

After the official tossed the ball in the air, Pond tipped it to an Apex player, who then tossed it out of bounds. Pond was then subbed out. He walked off the floor to a standing ovation.

“At first I thought it’d be embarrassing going out there and not being able to play,” Pond said. “It felt good to be out on the floor again and be with the guys.”

Cary took the ball out from the sideline and tossed it into the backcourt for Apex. The Cougars allowed the Imps to drop back into their defense, and the game proceeded as normal.

“We were going to show sportsmanship and trust to each other, and then we were going to go at each other tooth and nail for 32 minutes,” Gustafson said. “And we did. To me, that’s high school athletics.”

The opportunity to be a part of the festivities was welcome for Pond, especially after what happened on Senior Night during the football season. Pond, one of the team’s four captains, walked out to midfield for the coin flip and pregame instructions from the referees each game after he got hurt.

When he did that for the Imps’ regular-season finale at Cooper Field, one of the refs stopped him and told him that because he was not playing, he could not go out to midfield.

“It felt awful when they were like, you can’t do that,” Pond said. “I was able to do it games before, but not in that one for no particular reason. That was rough. Getting to come out on the floor and do the tip-off [Friday], I never thought I’d be able to do it again, play basketball. It was hard to accept. To go through the starting lineup and hear that people want you out there, it was an awesome feeling.”

For Pond, for Gustafson, for the rest of the team and everyone else in the gym, too.