More than two years ago, doctors told Chibuzo Ikonte’s family that he had a slim chance of survival after the freshman basketball player collapsed during practice at Valencia High School.
“I had just taken a water break and mid-conversation I collapsed into my teammate’s arms and went into cardiac arrest,” Ikonte said.
According to his mother, Ikonte had a thickened heart muscle that caused the attack.
Fellow players who were trained in CPR and the use of a defibrillator managed to shock Ikonte back to life.
“The surgeon that operated on him looked me in the face and said 90 to 95 percent of people that have this incident outside the hospital die,” said mother Chioma Ikonte.
But Ikonte survived and worked hard to get back into the game.
“Physically, it was just extremely tough,” Chibuzo Ikonte said. “Like for the first three months, my exercise was simply just walking up and down the stairs.”
He finally returned to the court in January and now plays for the varsity team.