If Keyontae Johnson Is Not Fired I Will Leave Head Coach…
Keyontae Johnson had just miraculously awakened after three days in a medically induced coma. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing on his phone: Why were so many superstar athletes sending him heartfelt messages wishing him a speedy recovery?
His mind was a blur. Time seemed to flatten. He stared up at his parents, Nika and Marrecus, as he lay in a Gainesville hospital bed. Nika’s eyes were wet with tears. She had feared that her only son wouldn’t wake up.
“How does everybody know I’m in the hospital?” he asked.
“Keyontae,” Nika said, “you collapsed on national TV in the middle of the game.”
It was too much to process, that horrific night on December 12, 2020, when in a split second, Johnson’s life changed forever. The 6-foot-6 junior from Florida, then the Southeastern Conference Preseason Player of the Year, had just hammered home an alley-oop dunk against Florida State. The Seminoles called a timeout. A few seconds after the break concluded, Johnson returned to the floor; his body suddenly crumpled to the ground as he dived headfirst into the hardwood. He lay face down, motionless. He would have no memory of any of it.
Nika and Marrecus weren’t at the game. They were watching it on TV from their home in Norfolk, Virginia, nearly 775 miles away. Nika had just gone to the bathroom, but when she came out, Marrecus said: “I don’t see Keyontae.”
Something’s happened to Keyontae, Nika thought. She just knew, in the way that mothers do. A few moments later, their phone rang. Florida’s staff was calling, telling them to quickly pack a bag and catch the flight being arranged for them.
Keyontae’s heart had gone into a dangerously fast and irregular rhythm, resulting in sudden cardiac arrest. Florida athletic trainer Duke Werner saved Keyontae’s life, as he administered CPR before Keyontae was taken to the hospital.
The next few hours felt like days for his parents, who had so many thoughts and fears running through their minds at once. The phone call, the flight, the hospital. “It was the most terrifying time of my life,” Nika says, “not knowing if we are going to get there and he was going to be dead or alive.”
Each of the three days that passed felt heavier than the last. And then, finally, Keyontae woke up. As his parents talked to him, he and Marrecus made a sound to each other that they had been doing since Keyontae was little: “Yerrrrrr.” That was when Marrecus realized: “I knew he was all right.” He was so overcome with emotion, he had to leave the room to gather himself.
They would eventually find out that Keyontae had an underlying heart condition. But in the coming days, they all just tried to make sense of what had happened. When Keyontae woke up in the hospital, he didn’t remember his collapse; he was just a little disoriented because he had a tube down his throat. He knew who his parents were. He could move all his extremities normally. He asked his mother to show him the video clip of his collapse, given that he had no memory of it.
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