Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008
At first glance, everything appears normal as Springbrook girls basketball head coach Oliver Riggs Jr. paces about his team’s sidelines. He is a picture of control, relaxed in his seat yet authoritative in his commands, like many good coaches are. It’s a welcome feeling — to be in charge, doing what he loves — one that he never wants to lose for the rest of his life.
He knows firsthand how quickly it can all be snatched away. Just two months ago, his control was gone.
It’s been just short of two weeks since Riggs has been in his comfortable position back at the helm. A year ago, his first with the Springbrook varsity girls, he coached the team to 20 wins. But his leadership, and his life, was at stake just a few weeks before the 2007-2008 season started — after experiencing an unusual numbness in his upper arm, Riggs consulted his doctor, who referred him to a cardiologist. Tests were run on his heart, and it was determined that Riggs, 53, had two arteries nearly completely blocked, and he would need a serious operation. On Nov. 6, he had double-bypass surgery to prevent the realistic possibility of coronary artery disease.
It’s the most common cause of sudden death in the world. It’s also why Riggs was so set on returning to the sidelines this year.
‘‘My whole life, I’ve always gone on the premise that things like this cannot be prevented, and I have to live my life doing the things that I want to do,” he said. ‘‘If something happens, I’m just a victim of fate. I believe it doesn’t matter what you do in life, whenever your time comes, you can’t avoid it. So I hope that when I finally leave, that I’ll be doing something that I really enjoy doing. I’m not going to live in fear.”
Riggs claims that all his other organs ‘‘are like that of a 40-year old.”
That’s what made the seriousness of the operation so surprising. His cardiologist told him that one of his arteries had 100-percent blockage, and another was nearly 80 percent precluded. In other words, blood flow to his heart was being dangerously stifled. Cypher Medical Information Center estimates that nearly 45 percent of the 1.1 million American per year who suffer heart attacks are fatal, and blocked arteries are the No. 1 reason why.
It didn’t come out of nowhere, though. Riggs first noticed something strange when playing in a softball game this summer. Going for a foul ball, he felt a twinge of pain in his chest and immediately stopped playing. The twinge went away and came back a few times, but Riggs didn’t pay much more attention to it until the end of the summer, while at a Washington Nationals game he felt the numbness that led him to contacting his doctor. He considered the episode a blessing.
‘‘If I didn’t have it, I’d probably be dead right now.”
An ex-paramedic by trade, he figured he had some kind of blockage, but didn’t let it deter him. A day before the operation, he ran 13 minutes on a treadmill. And after the surgery, he said he felt surprisingly good, only experiencing mild-chest pain. Though the operation was behind him, the most important challenge — in his mind — was still ahead. One of the first questions he asked his surgeon post-surgery was predictable: ‘‘When can I come back?” He was told it would have to be played by ear, as there was no definitive timetable. But the surgeon promised that he wouldn’t allow Riggs to return to coaching until he was 100 percent ready.
‘‘He said, ‘I don’t believe in 70 percent,” said Riggs.
In the meantime, the Blue Devils had a tough vacancy to fill. Springbrook athletics director Ron Lane asked field hockey and longtime lacrosse head coach Kearney Francis to fill in an interim position.
‘‘I didn’t ask her, I begged her actually,” said Lane. ‘‘She’s also my assistant AD, and I’d actually asked her to take the JV job when it came up. She said no at the time, so when this happened I said, ‘Kearney, I really need you to do this.’
‘‘But we had told Oliver right from the beginning, that the second he’s ready to come back, we want you to come back. Kearney felt the same way. She coached the whole season like it was her team, but always made references to Coach Riggs coming back.”
Though she had played college basketball at Hood College in Frederick, Francis had never coached basketball before. She’d been with the Blue Devils since 1998, coaching the lacrosse from 1999 through 2004 and field hockey for the last 10 years, winning a combined 118 games. From the moment she accepted the job, she knew she had to educate herself. In Lane’s words, she ‘‘got books that weekend, talked to former coaches, and just went full-throttle.”
Predictably, there were early struggles. The team won just one of their first five games. But they had righted the ship, winning five out of six games for a respectable 6-5 record by the time Riggs was able to return on Jan. 14.
It seemed Francis was just finding her niche at the helm, but she knew from the start that her term was short-lived.
‘‘I had a great time, and was just starting to get comfortable my last couple games. ‘‘But when Coach Riggs came back last Monday [Jan. 14], I was so happy to see him back. He and I have incredibly different coaching styles and I didn’t want kind of a situation where it was too many cooks in the kitchen. But I had a lot of fun doing this.”
Riggs had already asked Lane if it was a good idea to come back this season, as he had watched several previous home games from the stands, and appreciated the job Francis had done.
‘‘Oh, she did an unbelievable job, and I didn’t want to ruin a relationship that the girls had gotten with her,” Riggs said.
But it was his team. He had coached almost every girl on the team before, and he knew what to do when he came back. He’ll even show a bit of his old fire. When the girls lost their cool in the first half against Blair this past Friday, just his second game back, he lit into them.
It worked, as they erased an eight-point halftime lead almost instantly, and got their new-old head coach his second win since returning. In his first game back, Jan. 18, the Blue Devils routed Richard Montgomery, 62-40.
Things are getting back to normal for Riggs. He’s been back with his team for over two weeks now. He’s experiencing almost no pain. He’s still working at Springbrook during the school day (he was voted the county’s Supporting Service Worker of the Year in 2006). He’s even getting to coach with his son, Justin, a 2002 Springbrook grad and former Coppin State baseball player who is an assistant for the JV girls.
He’s living life. Not worrying about what might be, or what might have been.
‘‘I don’t want to be one of those guys,” he said. ‘‘It doesn’t matter what you do in life, whenever your time comes, it’s up. So when it is, I’m going to be doing something I love — maybe basketball, or being with my grandkids, doing something I really enjoy doing every day.”
