SEATTLE – She hears the whispers. She feels the stares. Wherever she goes, she knows all eyes are on her, and it’s not necessarily for the reason she’d like them to be.
She’s the one. You remember hearing the stories. Star college basketball player has a heart attack. Teammates come to her rescue and keep her alive. She recovers, but her basketball career is over. Or is it? She sits out a season but shoots some hoops, runs around, gets the competitive juices flowing, and wow, she feels pretty good despite the defibrillator implanted in her chest.
She approaches her coaches, her doctors, her parents. I want to play again, she says. It took some convincing, a lot of convincing, but eventually she signs a form releasing the school from any responsibility should her heart stop again, and she finds herself back on the court.
University of Washington women’s basketball player Kayla Burt’s story is well known, but is never less than amazing. So while she’d rather move on, she understands if that’s what most people want to talk to her about.
And both for her ability to successfully resume her basketball career and serve as an inspiration, Burt is a finalist for the Herald’s Woman of the Year in Sports award.
“Especially when we’re on the road, I see people pointing at me or talking, and I know what they’re talking about,” said Burt, a native of Arlington. “Of course I’d rather they talk about how I’m playing, but I know my story affected a lot of people. If I can inspire some people, that’s great. But hopefully people start noticing me more for basketball than for anything else.”
If Burt had only come back as a reserve deep on the Huskies’ bench, her story would be one of amazing determination. After all, following her cardiac arrest on New Year’s Eve 2002, she was clinically dead for two minutes and in a coma for 15 hours. But it wasn’t enough for Burt to just come back.
“I knew if I was going to play again, I wanted to do it at a high level,” Burt said. “I didn’t want to just come back to come back. I wanted to help the team.”
In her first game in 22 months, Burt led Washington in scoring. The 5-foot-11, 22-year-old guard finished the season as the Huskies’ leading scorer (9.6 points a game), top assist-maker (84), best free-throw shooter (75.8 percent) and finished second in 3-pointers (44) and steals (44). Most impressively, Burt was second on the team in minutes, playing 23.7 a game.
And, she said, she never had any physical problems, other than a broken nose.
“I don’t even think about it anymore,” Burt said. “I just go out and play like I used to. It’s something that’s a part of me, but I don’t want to dwell on it or I’d never do anything.”
After the season, Burt was awarded the V Foundation Comeback Award over 15 other finalists. The award goes to one basketball player at an NCAA university of any level who overcame adversity.
If you think about it, who else could it have gone to?
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