While on a tour of the west, Newhard Lee, 34, a two-time Express-Times Player of the Year, was thrown from a horse at Yellowstone National Park Monday.
View full sizeNorthampton Area High School graduate Laura Newhard is pictured while vacationing in Barcelona, Spain.Two-time Express-Times Girls Basketball Player of the Year Laura Newhard Lee was seriously injured Monday after a horse-riding accident in Wyoming, her father said.
While on a tour of the Western United States, Lee, 34, a former Northampton Area High
School basketball star, was thrown from a horse at Yellowstone National
Park.
Lee suffered seven broken ribs, a collapsed lung and kidney and liver fractures. She has no significant internal bleeding, her father, David Newhard said.
She was airlifted to Idaho Falls Regional Medical Center, where she was initially in critical condition. A hospital nursing supervisor said tonight she is in serious condition, and her father said she remains in the intensive care unit.
Her lung was re-inflated, he said, and she’s now breathing on her own.
Her father said when he heard the news, “It let the air out of my sails."
While riding with her husband, Randy, a tree fell and spooked their horses and two others, Newhard said. Lee's horse flipped her off its back and onto a dirt and grass patch on the trail about 3:30 p.m., he added.
“I felt it was going to be bad when they listed all this stuff,” he said. “And then after the first couple hours things sounded a lot better then.”
David Newhard said the next three days are crucial as she could be susceptible to pneumonia as her body heals.
“Any problem now could be a bad thing,” he said. “There are a lot of things that could happen.”
Newhard said Lee isn’t a horse person. Laura and her sister, Leslie Newhard Nguyen, and their husbands, decided to take a two-week trip out West.
Lee now lives in Chester Springs, Chester County, and she works for the Vanguard financial group outside of Philadelphia.
The former center, who continued her career at LaSalle University, finished with 2,237 career points, an all-time best in Northampton County. She graduated from Northampton in 1996.