Senior appreciation: He lost one season to heart surgery, another to the pandemic
The idea is simple, and full disclosure it’s stolen from ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt.
With winter sports cut short and spring sports canceled across the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands and perhaps millions of dreams slammed shut. We cannot bring that back. Can’t make up for the championships never won, or the lessons never learned, or the memories that won’t be made.
But we can honor the coaches and athletes involved. We can tell their stories, share their perspectives and appreciate their journeys.
First up in what we hope will be a weekly series running through what would’ve been high school graduation time is Cobe Green. And perhaps it’s fitting that between the time we first reached out for this story and you reading this now, ESPN highlighted Green and his Lawrence Bishop Seabury basketball teammates on Van Pelt’s show.
The 30-second version is good enough: Green missed all but two games of his junior season after open-heart surgery and was among the best players on a 22-2 team that qualified for the Kansas Class 2A state semifinals when the tournament was shut down. That’s two seasons in a row that his opportunity was wiped away by something completely out of his control.
The longer version of Green’s path is even better. That’s his promise, anyway.
“My story doesn’t end with losing a state championship to COVID-19,” he said. “I have a lot more in store. I have a lot more to give.”
Lets go back a bit, to November 2018. It was a routine visit. Green felt sick. A cold, but nothing serious. The doctor checked the basics but noticed a murmur from Green’s heart. This was not necessarily dangerous. It could’ve been a thousand things, most of them harmless.
A follow-up was scheduled. Green kept practicing, kept playing, and scored 44 points in Seabury’s first two games. Then went to the follow-up. More tests. Then the bad news: One of the valves to his heart was too thin. It wasn’t providing enough blood.
Green was in terrific shape, but particularly given his level of activity, if the condition was left undetected or untreated he was at risk of a heart attack — even death.
“It didn’t settle in for me for the longest time,” he said. “I just didn’t understand the gravity of it.”
That process was slow. Seabury went 16-5 without Green, losing its first playoff game on a 30-foot buzzer-beater to eventual champion Ness City. There is no way to know, of course, but Seabury coach Jonathan Raney said he is “sure” his team would’ve beaten Ness City with Green suited up.
After that, who knows?
Green was still early in his recovery then, three months from being able to do anything with a basketball. The day he could finally play again was a reality check, by the way. He’d been through major surgery and virtually no physical activity for six months. He felt, in his words, “lazy.” The first time he played his shoulders tired after two jump shots.
Still, he worked. First to get in shape. Then to get into basketball shape. Then jump shots, then ball handling, slowly and deliberately making his way back to where he was.
“Every rep was working to be the best version of myself, so I could be the best version of myself for my team,” he said. “Every rep, every practice, every time I lifted, every time I ran, it was all done with a state championship on my mind. That’s what we were all working for.”
Green said he is “100 percent” sure Seabury would’ve won the state championship. But then he corrected himself — “110 percent, honestly.”
There is no way to know that, of course. Every player on every team would’ve felt the same way. But that’s the point, right? The unknown. Seabury will not hang a championship banner in its gym. That’s all gone now. Replaced by hypotheticals.
Two years in a row, for Green, but this is where one of the most unfair sports stories imaginable takes on a tinge of hope.
Green and his teammates were watching a playoff game when they got the news. They’d have played the winner of the game in front of them in the semis, but all of a sudden, nothing. They were all going home.
Green was the first person Raney thought of when the tournament was canceled, and the first person he approached after talking to the group. He thanked Green for working, for believing, for sacrificing. Green thanked Raney for the same.
Now, his days are spent on schoolwork, on a weight rack in the basement of his family’s house and the hoop on their cul-de-sac. Open-heart surgery ended his junior season. COVID-19 ended his senior year.
All of which makes him more determined to make the most of whatever awaits on the other side. He’s still getting college offers, for instance. He can feel sorry for himself or he can do what he did before — work toward being the best version of himself.
There are no medical limits on him now. He’s free.
“That’s my motivation,” he said. “I can’t take any days off now.”
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.