Ball State University Athletics
SL TV: A Rugged Path - The Shelby Merder Story
January 25, 2015 | Women's Basketball
Video Produced by Tyler Bradfield and J.C. Obringer
Ball State Sports Link
Story by Brendan Perkins
Dubois County Herald Sports Editor
Carly Merder could hardly believe the words she was hearing. No way was her sister being straight-up and honest.
After all, Shelby Merder has become a starter on the women's basketball team at Ball State University because she towers 6-foot-3, lopes gracefully around the court, can swat shots left and right, and has range that extends to 3-point territory. Right? That explains most of it. Not all.
Shelby Merder possesses all the raw materials. But Carly Merder supplies her older sister with an intangible. It's not a skill gained through hours of ballhandling drills or thousands of jump shots. It comes through a sisterly connection between two girls whose timelines in life have been starkly incongruent, but who have generated a fibrous bond because of it.
People ask me why you play, and it's because she can't. And I think that's like a huge motivator for me.
Those words come from Shelby in the trailer for a short video feature being produced by Ball State Sports Link, a student-run multimedia organization within the university's school of communications.
Neither Carly nor Shelby has gotten a glimpse of the finished production yet. A mere peek at the teaser, though, was enough to dredge up an emotional reflex.
“It shocked me. When I saw the video, it brought me to tears at first,” Carly says.
“That's what really shocked me, because why would you play basketball for your sister? It's like, 'Why?'”
The “why” for Shelby always leads back to Carly. 
Carly's a senior at Jasper High School and Shelby graduated two years earlier, after a sterling athletic career that included seven total sectional titles in volleyball and basketball and nearly 1,000 career points in hoops. Shelby starred. Carly merely wanted to compete. Her body wouldn't allow it.
Carly was born with crooked feet, which first required surgery when she was just 6. Three more surgeries followed, because as the feet grew, they re-grew inward each time. For each surgery, the bones were broken to reconstruct the feet.
That in itself posed an ordeal — Carly has a tough time going through airport security, because of the 15 or so metal rods, screws and brackets in her feet — but the lingering effects of surgeries amplified the concerns. Carly began having seizures, which doctors surmised was a reaction to the morphine during her first surgery as a kindergartner, although the genesis of the seizures will never be known for sure. Seizures invaded at the most arbitrary of times — once in the shower, another time while dancing in the living room — and threw a scare into Shelby, who'd watch her little sister shake, foam at the mouth and turn blue before the episodes would pass, even though the seizures weren't life-threatening.
Shelby also couldn't shake just how indiscriminate Carly's condition was. Once, when Carly was studying for a final, a seizure struck. She forgot everything she had been studying the last few hours.
“She's just always a little bit different in the aspects that (younger sister) Riley and I succeed in, she's just always a little bit behind, but she fights so hard, so so hard to compare to us in those aspects,” says Shelby, who's averaging 3.7 points and 2.5 rebounds with a team-best 13 blocks this season while starting five of 14 games. “But her personality makes up for it.”
Carly is, after all, the girl who radiated after emerging from one of her operations. The mental snapshot is still with Shelby upon seeing her sister come out of surgery: “She's in her wheelchair, just smiling. Smilin' away. I'm like, 'You are nuts.' I would be the exact opposite — sulking, negative, grouchy,” Shelby says, laughing. “But that's not Carly. She is just a bubbly little boost of energy for everyone.”
Growing up, Carly never strayed from her fervor for sports. When Shelby was a junior at JHS starring in sports, Carly quietly labored through a season on the freshman team, coming home from practices and games with her feet covered in blisters and, many times, bleeding. Carly has trouble fitting into traditional women's shoes; sometimes she opts for men's shoes, which are wider.
Doctors tried to dissuade her from playing basketball in the first place. Carly kept playing, kept trying, kept bleeding.
Sports were impossible to ditch, because they're a card-carrying requisite of any Merder. The girls' father, Dwain, played three sports at JHS and hoops for two years at Vincennes University, and mother Lisa (Stenftenagel) comes from an athletic family. Riley, now a seventh-grader, already stands 5-8 and “identical” to Shelby in skill and mannerisms at the same age, Dwain said. In that vain, it's not easy for the 5-7 Carly to be different.
Especially when the day arrived before her sophomore year when doctors broke her the news: She needed one more surgery on her right foot. Those feet that were spotted with more than 20 scars just couldn't handle sports any longer.
“A lot of tears,” Dwain recalls. “That was tough to give up, especially when you've got an older sister that's good, and your younger one is going to be good. That was just a tough day. That was like losing your puppy.”
Self-pity wasn't the prevailing response for Carly, though. It never is.
Shortly after that surgery, Carly perked up with an idea to remain linked to hoops. She signed on as the team's student manager.
Carly's first year of managing overlapped with Shelby's senior season. While Shelby the starring attraction in the game with all eyes on her, Shelby silently admired the input from her sister that went unnoticed by the masses — case in point, that she was completing the housework of her managerial job while on crutches much of that first season.
Carly's biggest boost may have been the simplest thing she did.
“Just coming off the floor and high-fiving her was a great feeling, just to have her there,” Shelby says.
Shelby wonders constantly: her sister's reservoir of energy and optimism always seems to be spilling over the banks. Where does it come from? Carly simply says it's her duty in the sibling hierarchy.
“Since I'm the middle child, I always stick up for Shelby, I'm always like the tough one for her, and I want to be positive for her, and I'm always there for her,” Carly says. “Whenever she's backed down or sad, I'm always there for her. That's my goal. I don't want to be sad or anything. I just want to be there for her.”
The support runs both ways.
Carly's the type who, when the sisters were younger, accepted the blame for something she didn't do, just to spare the other two from trouble. Shelby reciprocated some love after her sister's operations. She fetched pills and food. Shelby switched and gave Carly her downstairs bedroom so Carly didn't have tromp up the stairs. Shelby assisted with homework, as the medication for the surgeries and seizures makes concentration and comprehension difficult for Carly and sometimes causes fatigue. Shelby helped do Carly's hair.
“We've been through a lot together,” says Carly, who controls her seizures with medication as doctors are hopeful they'll eventually stop completely. “We've cried together, we've done everything together. I don't know what we didn't do together.”
Shelby's been in Muncie the last two years, but the JHS girls basketball team continues to profit from another Merder. This season, Carly has earned that coveted post at the end of the lineup lane when starters are announced, greeting each starter with a beaming smile and high-fives.
“I think that's super important for Riley to see,” Carly says of her younger sister. “Basketball is a game. But even if you're not playing it, you can still be a part of it and you can still impact people.”
Added Wildcat senior basketball player Elisabeth Ahlbrand: “I think she finds excitement in doing those little things, because that's her way of being involved, and she's a big part of our basketball family, as we call it. I think she realizes that.”
The makers of the Ball State Sports Link feature -- junior Tyler Bradfield and sophomore J.C. Obringer -- may have spotted something special, too.
Most of the video exclusives they produce are in the range of six to eight minutes; the one about the Merders might be about double that length, Shelby's heard. There's even been talk that the feature could be given to Fox for possible airtime on its networks.
Dwain Merder never really heard Shelby open up about sister until Shelby started playing at BSU. Likewise, Carly had never heard an outward expression. But Shelby's revelations in the feature confirmed a question that her sister thought couldn't possibly be true: “I was just like, 'Wow, she really actually did play basketball for me,'” Carly says.
“Stepping out the court, I always ask myself, 'Why am I doing this?' And then I see (Carly) and I'm just like, that's exactly why I'm doing it, is because she cannot play,” Shelby says. “Just knowing that she puts a smile on her face every day, even though she's been though way worse obstacles than I could ever imagine, that's just inspiration alone to keep working every day and keep giving my best effort at what I'm doing.”
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