After a Heart Transplant, an Unlikely Return to the Lacrosse Field
Ryan Scoble returned to the Mercyhurst Lakers just 18 months after receiving a heart transplant
There isn’t one specific crowning moment in this story. No climactic goal, no championship trophy, no patch on the jerseys. There isn’t even a giant banner next to the field, offering encouragement. Instead, the magic is in how normal this all appears from the outside. If you went to a Mercyhurst Lakers lacrosse game this season, Ryan Scoble would simply blend in with the rest of his team, a hard-nosed defender fighting off any challengers as the Lakers—a Division III powerhouse from Erie, Pa.—make a charge towards the NCAA tournament.
But it’s not normal. It’s anything but. Just 18 months ago, this image couldn’t have seemed farther from reality. That’s when Scoble lay in a hospital about 100 miles away, being wheeled into the operating room for a heart transplant.
Scoble had been perfectly healthy, and then in the middle of a game during the 2021 season, he felt as if he was, “breathing through a straw.” He was tired. Lightheaded. Not long after the opening whistle, he took a knee on the field and told the trainer that he couldn’t play anymore. The trainer sent him to the hospital.
At first, Scoble assumed he’d be fine. Maybe it was just an allergy attack. But when he was asked to return for more tests, and during that visit there was a room full of doctors waiting for him, he knew something was wrong. What they discovered was that his heart was swollen to be “the size of a grapefruit.” His heart was failing. “‘Transplant’ was being thrown around from day one,” Scoble’s mother, Kelley, told the Wall Street Journal.
Scoble called his coach with the news. “The phone rang,” Coach Chris Ryan told USA Lacrosse Magazine. “I remember hanging up and just being bent over crying. As a coach, there are game losses, you don’t play well, there’s all that stuff you get bent out of shape about. But your worst fear is that someone on your team gets seriously hurt or worse.”
Coach Ryan had to tell the rest of the players. “This thing is happening to the person who has the biggest heart on the team,” he said.
The coach drove to the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic, where Scoble was awaiting his procedure. Due to quarantine restrictions, Coach Ryan wasn’t allowed inside. So they just talked on the phone, and Scoble waved from the window.
Scoble got his transplant on May 11, 2021, and at first, things seemed fine. But two days later, Scoble’s body rejected the transplant. He flatlined for 11 long seconds before being revived. But when he was, there was only one thing on his mind.
“For me, lacrosse was something that just brought me so much joy,” Scoble said. “It was freedom. Something I enjoyed my whole life. People were implying I might never play again, and that made it personal to me.”
He had lost 60 pounds in the hospital and slowly, at a rehab center, he worked to rebuild his strength. At first, he just wanted to be able to walk for 15 minutes. Then he wanted to do a pullup. Then he ran his first mile. “I was the youngest person in there by like 50 years,” Scoble said and added, “I could tell it was firing up some of the older people.”
All the while, he was keeping Coach Ryan attuned to his progress, though the coach didn’t really think he’d ever make it onto the field again. Two months after the surgery, Scoble asked his doctor when he’d be able to play lacrosse.
“He looked at me like I was a psycho,” Scoble said. “I died in front of this doctor two months ago.”
Finally, the doctor gave him a timeline: 4 years. Maybe.
18 months later, though, with that doctor’s blessing, Scoble was back with the Mercyhurst team, along with a special padding over his new heart.
“I remember it was the first week we were back. I open the door to the locker room and got that first scent—plastic of sticks, smell of pads—and I choked up,” Scoble said. “Putting on the green and white pinnie and the pads, I was tearing up in warmups.”
He asked everybody in the program not to treat him any differently, and they haven’t. Scoble is just back on the team, finishing what he started. On his own terms.
With a whole lot of heart.
🏀 If you’re watching the NBA Playoffs tomorrow, look out for Kenneth Lofton Jr. on the Memphis Grizzlies. He started the year as an undrafted free agent out of lowly Louisiana Tech. He’s ending it playing against LeBron’s Lakers—and setting franchise records in the process.
🧢 I still remember where I was the first time I watched Clayton Kershaw pitch (with Vin Scully on the call). From the beginning, it’s been clear that he’s special. The great Joe Posnanski, for my money the best baseball writer alive, wrote a lovely ode to Kershaw that’s not to be missed. Some of the stats he unearths are mind boggling.
♻️ Tomorrow is Earth Day, which is a perfect time to re-read the story we wrote last year about Vermont Green FC, “the most environmentally and socially responsible professional sports team in the country.” And I’m happy to report that now, heading into their second season, the Green just sold out season tickets. GO GREEN!
🦖 Oakland A’s (long live ‘em!) second baseman Tony Kemp has been slumping this year. He turned to an old timer, former Mets outfielder Mookie Wilson, for some….uhhhh…interesting advice on how to get his mojo back.
🎶 To all our NYC readers: Will somebody please go to the Met Opera and see “Champion,” the new opera based on the life of boxer Emile Griffith, and report back about how it is? A sports opera! Why didn’t we think of that? The Met describes the plot, “Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green stars as the closeted young hatmaker-turned-prizefighter, who rises from obscurity to become world champion and, in one of the great tragedies in sports history, kills his homophobic archrival in the ring.” Read the New York Times review.
🎰 I’m stretching the definition of “sport” a little here but…this story about professional roulette players who beat the game is so good, I have to recommend it.
