Tuesday, October 21, 2008
MORTONS GAP – Heart. It’s not just something an athlete needs for extra drive and determination during a competition, it’s also what pumps the blood and allows that athlete to continue.
Corey Eakins, senior captain for the Storm cross country team, knows this fact more than most after running nearly the entire 2007 KHSAA state meet with an enlarged heart.
Just one-half mile into the race, Eakins tried to accelerate around a turn to catch a runner and felt a sharp pain in his chest he had never experienced, but still continued.
“About the mile mark, I saw that my time was slower than usual and I was like, ‘I just got to keep going the second mile to get it back,’” Eakins said. “Then I tried to speed up again and I just couldn’t because my chest started hurting and I started getting dizzy. I’ve ran hundreds and hundreds of times and it didn’t feel right.”
Eakins’ coaches and family watched the race and could tell he was in pain.
“He went running by me in the first loop of the state meet and he was pretty well off of where I expected him to be,” coach Jerry Womack said. “I said, ‘Corey, what’s the matter with you?’ and he just tapped his chest and I thought, ‘Oh, well he’s telling me he can’t breathe.’”
Despite the mysterious injury, Eakins completed the race.
“We got finished and he said, ‘Man, my chest is killing me,’” Womack said. “I thought maybe well he’s got a case of bronchitis or had something going on.”
For Eakins, the discomfort was too much to ignore any more. Once Eakins returned to Madisonville, his parents took him to Multicare, where the doctors administered an electrocardiogram. The result was an enlarged heart on the left side.
A second test in Evansville procured the same conclusion.
When Eakins told the doctors he had just returned from running a 5K, the doctors were more than a bit surprised.
“They thought I was crazy to be honest with you,” Eakins said. “They were like, ‘You did what?’ kind of thing and I was just like ‘Yeah, it started hurting, but I kept going.’”
Not finishing the race was never an option for Eakins.
“I was never taught to quit or stop running,” he said. “I’ve never stopped doing any thing, so I was like what’s different now? I didn’t know what it was I just knew, ‘This hurts, I can’t run my best,’ but I was like ‘Well, I at least have to finish.’”
It was just desire to keep going. That’s all it was. I was like, ‘I can’t be embarrassed where I walk at the state meet.’”
After taking an entire month off physical activity, Eakins took a stress test and was finally cleared. The doctors told Eakins, who had a pre-existing heart murmur, the stress of running as avidly as he did finally took its toll in the state meet.
“I would get up at 5:30 in the morning and run,” Eakins said. “Then, I would come to school and I had a sports conditioning class and I would run then and then I would run again at practice. Then, I would lift at conditioning.”
All the stress I was putting on myself – I would go all out in every thing just trying to get better. I was trying to get my best time at state and have scouts look at me. That way, senior year, they would already be looking at me, so I just put my body in so much stress.”
Following the stress evaluation, Eakins was allowed to return to play basketball, but had already missed a month.
Although Eakins has not had any problems since, it is a situation that could occur again and that knowledge has not escaped his mind.
“It’s kind of hard to do: to make yourself get better and run hard and yet you don’t want to do too much because you could end up the same way as last year,” Eakins said. “I knew if I could handle that, I could handle pretty much any other running thing, so that’s not a factor.”
At the same time, during the track season, my first race after the state, I was kind of weary because I was like, ‘Oh man.’ You just get that same feeling where you’re like scared that it could happen again.”
Serious injuries are not something new for Eakins either.
During his eighth grade football season, Eakins was blind-sided and twisted his back during practice.
Even at his young age, Eakins initially wanted to play through the pain.
“At the time, my lower back was hurting, but I was always taught to tough it out, no big deal,” he said. “Take some Advil, put some ice on it, keep going. I finally went to the doctor and they said I had a dislocated hip and herniated disk, so I had to go to physical therapy.”
Eakins missed the rest of the football season and half the basketball schedule.
The injury spurred him to take up cross country though, following in the footsteps of his older brother Zack, who graduated from Central in 2005.
“(Zack) was like, ‘How about running?,’” Eakins said. “I hated running back in eighth grade, but I was like, ‘Well, I’ll give it a try.’ I started running freshman year and just got hooked on it, loved it ever since.”
Now, in his final year of high school, Eakins is a captain just like his brother was, but Corey has a chance to lead Central to its third consecutive state appearance, something that has never been accomplished at the school.
Womack said Eakins was an obvious choice for team captain this year.
“He’s just able to run practice for me and he just does the things a good captain does,” Womack said. “That’s what you look for out of a captain, that’s what you look for out of a leader, somebody that the rest of the team will get behind and kind of gravitate to.”
Despite the injuries, Eakins has continued to work hard, achieving a personal record time of 18:45 in his last race on Saturday, and judging by his words, the experience will only fuel his passion for the sport even more.
“Just the feeling that you get after a really good race and all the effort that you put into it and you reap the benefits of all the hard work through the race,” he said. “There’s no other feeling to describe it, just the adrenaline and being out here. I can’t put it into words almost, I just love it.”
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