How a Life-Altering Burn Accident Led Dorie Harrison to Pro Basketball Career
In the fall of 2023, basketball was far from Dorie Harrison’s mind.
She was working as a makeup artist with the biggest week of her career in front of her–red carpets, award shows, a wedding–when a life-altering burn accident brought her ambitions to a screeching halt, and indirectly, set the course for her return to basketball.
Harrison began her collegiate career at Kentucky before transferring to Lipscomb, where she played three seasons from 2019 to 2022, but basketball didn’t feel like a potentially fulfilling path forward.
“I had a bad college playing experience,” Harrison said. “I didn’t have a great relationship with basketball at that point.”
Instead, back in her home state of Tennessee, Harrison was pushing full steam ahead in her makeup artistry career, working on television and film projects, red carpet events, athletes, and high-profile weddings.
“This was one of the biggest weekends of my career,” Harrison recalled. “I was so excited because I had finally been working to a point where I felt that makeup was what I was going to do with my life forever.”
That high-stakes week was undone by a tumbler of hot tea spilling onto Harrison’s lap while driving to her wedding assignment in rural Tennessee in October 2023.
“I immediately could actually smell my skin burning off,” Harrison said. “It was insane. You think hot tea couldn’t be that hot. It was scalding. I suffered second and third-degree burns on 10% of my body, and it was just the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever gone through. I just felt like my life was flashing before my eyes.”
Harrison spent weeks in the hospital undergoing multiple surgeries, including procedures to remove damaged skin and receive donor skin grafts. The recovery process was grueling—she couldn’t take full showers, couldn’t sweat, and lived in the hospital, unable to even wear full clothing for nearly two months.
“I was wrapped in all this gauze, couldn’t wear any real clothes,” she said. “It was just really tough on my mental, just to have that happen and build your confidence back up.”
The mental challenges of a life plan put on hold were just as difficult as the physical recovery. But a bright spot emerged in the midst of the heartbreaking ordeal–a care package that Harrison received in the hospital from a Nashville-based burn recovery organization, Scars Uncovered.
Founded by Nashville native Andrea Pitts, a burn survivor herself, Scars Uncovered is a relief nonprofit for burn survivors of all modalities: fire, scalding, electrical, and chemical burns. The organization provides support for burn survivors and their families, with a particular focus on assembling care packages for people in the hospital after their accidents.
The package included a letter that created a lasting impact.
“I read that letter the first day in my hospital when I got the care package, and it just stuck with me and showed me that there’s hope,” Harrison said. “It showed me that this wasn’t the end of my story.”
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Even as her wounds began to heal, Harrison still struggled with the idea of what could have been. It took a nudge from her sister Isabelle, a member of Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball’s Player Executive Committee, to start looking toward the future again.
Isabelle had played in the inaugural season of AU Pro Basketball and knew that there was still an open roster spot for the upcoming second season. After rushing to her sister’s side to aid in her recovery, she encouraged Dorie to begin training and chase the chance to play basketball again.
“She reminded me of who I am,” Dorie said of her sister. “I think she introduced AU to me to show me what I’m capable of, to continue to help me push forward. She put that on my mental because she knew I wasn’t going to say no. She knew I was going to work towards it until I got a result. She knows how to put a battery in my back for sure.”
Dorie didn’t know if she would be signed for the league’s second season, but as soon as she was cleared to train in December 2023, she poured all her energy into building up her game.
“For the next two months, I didn’t even have the contract yet, but I was killing myself,” she said. “I worked out every day for two months, three times a day.”
Her gamble paid off when she signed the 40th and final contract for the competition.
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Since her AU debut, she has continued her basketball career, playing professionally in Chile for the past two years, and earning Most Valuable Player honors while playing with Sportiva Italiana Valparaiso in 2024.
“By the grace of God, I got this contract,” Harrison said. “AU has been such a blessing on my life and my career, and such a special community here. I don’t take that for granted, and I love pouring back into them, and I love the ways that they pour back into us.”
Now, three years later, Harrison is a member of AU’s Player Executive Committee, shaping league decisions and championing Scars Uncovered–the organization that shaped her road to recovery–as she competes in her home city of Nashville.
“It means the world,” Harrison said of her PEC role. “It means the world that AU sees the ways that I try to impact the community, especially us being in Nashville these past two years. It’s been very personal for me. I love telling my story, and I’ve learned that telling your testimony can encourage other people.”
She took an active role in helping AU integrate into Nashville, writing a five-page document with recommendations for venues, local partnerships, and community connections. She also helped connect the league with Nashville native Daisha McBride, who wrote the theme song for seasons 4 and 5.
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Harrison credits her family and her faith for getting her through the lowest valleys of her injury. She brings her faith to AU through the weekly Bible study she leads. Now, looking back on the accident that changed her life, Harrison sees it through a different lens.
“We always think that when things in life happen to us, it’s like, why God? Why would you let this happen to me?” she said. “But when you’re able to move past it and grow, you see that God has his hand on it all. That accident ultimately led me to playing basketball again. Basketball has been redefined for me, and I’ve been able to redefine success for myself.”
With National Burn Awareness Week recognized in February, Harrison is doing more than play for Scars Uncovered as her Athlete Cause. She partnered with the organization to volunteer and assemble the same care packages she received in the hospital.
“Hopefully it does for someone what it has done for me, which is spark that hope and just plant a seed of fire that has grown to be what my career is now,” she said.
For other burn survivors facing their own dark valleys, Harrison offers a message of hope rooted in her own experience.
“Your story is not over,” she said. “Whatever has changed or impacted you on the outside, you cannot change the character of your heart, and you’re still called to be a beautiful person inside and out. There are people out there that understand you and that know what you’re going through. I just encourage you to push forward, and I encourage you to still show up as your full self, the best way you know how.”
Those looking to support burn survivors can visit scarsuncovered.com to donate. Contributions help provide relief for burn survivors with food, housing, childcare, transportation, and critical support during their recovery journeys.
“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” Harrison said. “Any circumstance in your life that presents so much adversity like this one has for me, it makes me even more excited to get on the court every night and to do my best and to support Scars Uncovered. It’s another layer of pride I have.”
Siera Jones is the digital media reporter at Athletes Unlimited. You can follow her on Instagram and X @sieraajones.
