ONALASKA — They were two incidents that took place roughly two months apart.
One happened at a friendly basketball game and the other one that began as a simple headlight malfunction during a long drive home.
Both tremendously impacted the Heit and Kraus families and brought with them a much clearer focus how sports can play some kind of role in overcoming heavy circumstances.
Onalaska High School softball coach Mesa Heit’s husband Kevin suffered cardiac arrest while playing in a basketball game between parents and kids on Feb. 15. Assistant coach Tony Kraus’s wife Katie found out that she needed surgery after a diagnosis of follicular dendritic cell sarcoma in April.
The events uprooted the lives of both families, but having extended family that wore the purple and white of the Hilltoppers played a hand in maneuvering through those events.
“The girls gave me hope, happiness and love when I needed it most,” Mesa said. “They signed up to play softball because they loved the game and want to compete, but their passion for the sport and their commitment to one another brought so much more.”
That also went for Mesa’s daughter MJ, Kraus and his daughter Sydney — all of whom came to the conclusion that they needed the sport and team to balance the complicated circumstances in their lives.
It all started with the aforementioned basketball game the day after Valentine’s Day.
Just after the announcement that 15 minutes remained in the game, Kevin went for a steal, turned and collapsed.
“At first, I saw like, ‘OK, old man, did you stretch? Did you pull a (hamstring) or something?'” Mesa recalled. “But when I went over there, he was seizing.”
Mesa’s background as a coach includes knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and how to use an automatic external defibrillator. There was an AED on hand since they were at a school, and other parents stepped in to help both with Kevin and with clearing the gym of the kids playing in the game.
MJ, a sophomore, was one of those kids. And she wasn’t sure what to make of what was happening.
“At first, I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I thought it was a joke. I was on the court with him, and he just fell over and collapsed.
“I thought someone pushed him and he was going to call a foul, but he didn’t get back up. Then he started seizing.”
While a call was made to 911, Mesa and other parents administered the AED.
“It ended up shocking him, and then compressions started,” she said. “After a round of compressions, Kevin came back, and it was like, ‘woah, what just happened?'”
Kevin didn’t seem to be a person at risk for this. He regularly plays all kinds of sports with the kid, and Mesa had never heard him complain of being too tired or faint or say he felt weak during or after competing.
What they learned was that Kevin has a genetic heart disease.
“That actually had one of his valves completely plugged and clogged up, and the other three were at 75 percent,” Mesa said. “”His widowmaker was at 85 percent (blockage).
“… He wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have the AED because the percentage of people having cardiac arrest like that with just compressions and CPR is such a low percentage of survival without brain damage or something like that. We were lucky with where it happened.”
Two arteries from Kevin’s chest wall and one from his arm were used in the triple-bypass surgery, which took place in Madison on Feb. 25. They spent several days in La Crosse while waiting for a bed and surgery date to open up in Madison, and Mesa said the transport took place via ambulance on Feb. 19 — the night before an ice storm hit the area.
Three days after surgery, they were home on what was already a special day.
“It was my birthday,” Mesa said. “It was a great birthday gift.”
Kevin was equipped with a LiveVest wearable cardioverter defibrillator that he wore until having a defibrillator implanted during another surgery on May 26.
That surgery actually kept Mesa from coaching Onalaska’s WIAA Division 1 regional semifinal against Eau Claire Memorial. She enlisted Onalaska football coach Tom Yashinsky to coach with Tony that day, and the Hilltoppers prevailed 7-6 in 10 innings.
Kevin was returned to his room for recovery right about the time the game started, and Mesa monitored the action on GameChanger and communicated with coaches via her watch.
The three months between surgeries included regular appointments and some lifestyle changes. Mesa worked as much as she could but was responsible for most of that transportation with no other family in town.
Her high school basketball coach Kris Risch, who lives in Holmen, also jumped in to drive Kevin and help ease the load on that front.
The story for the Kraus family began much sooner but took a major turn after Kevin’s initial surgery.
It was back in August when Katie and Sydney were driving home from a softball showcase in the Milwaukee area. Upon reaching Oakfield, Katie called Tony to say the headlights on the car were too dim to continue the drive.
Tony picked up replacements but they were the wrong kind, so they ventured to Tomah to solve their problem. While shopping, Katie said she didn’t feel well, so they headed to the hospital.
The initial diagnosis was kidney stones, but Katie was told medical personnel wanted to discus something else they found on the CT scan that was administered.
They had discovered a mass in her chest between her heart and lung. A biopsy in September came back benign, and a follow appointment in December showed no change.
But Katie’s CT scan was done to look at two areas. The initial biopsy was taken from one area and not both. When the second area was biopsied, they were told she had follicular dendritic cell sarcoma — a cancer that affects 0.05 percent of people in the world.
“It’s very rare,” Tony said, “and it’s very centralized.”
Nothing more was scheduled until February, and Tony said they were told by a doctor that it was likely a cancer Katie would live with rather than die from.
That changed during a later visit, and it was determined that the cancer needed to be removed.
“It was a great surgical team at Mayo Clinic (in Rochester), and it was done by one of the best doctors in the world. They got the cancer out, but they had to take her left lung, too.”
Katie returned home — just like Kevin — on her spouse’s birthday.
A follow scan on May 14 revealed Katie to be cancer-free.
The coaches opted to not share with the team what Katie’s was going through until right before the surgery. They thought there was enough on the minds of the players with what was going on in the Heit household.
“When we found out, it was when Kevin’s house was kind of settling down,” junior Zoey Lichty said. “I think we were shocked because they hid it so well for our team’s sake and so we didn’t have more distractions.
“But it wasn’t a distraction. It was more of a reason for us to play and be there for our teammate and coach.”
Tony said it was hard to be everywhere he was needed. But Katie has family living nearby, and Tony was able to spend the necessary time with the team while knowing Katie was receiving the help she needed.
“It was hard being away from her,” Tony said “(Softball) has always been my stress relief or my happy place. Once I get on that side of the fence, stuff will go away, but this has been hard.”
The situation was probably made easier for the players because Kevin and Katie were both regular spectators throughout Onalaska’s 18-10 season. Tony said Katie missed one due to cold, but nothing health-related kept her away.
“Seeing them at the games was a big part (of the transition),” senior Zoe Koonce-O’Kane said. “I think it took a couple weeks, and not everyone knew everything.
“It got real when (Mesa) opened up to us about it, and then when you see them and can talk to them, you feel like it’s going to be OK.”
But to be sure that the team was handling the situation as a whole, Mesa turned a typical postgame meeting into something more after the Hilltoppers lost a nonconference game to DeForest on April 25.
As the team gathered in its regular spot in right field of their home diamond, Mesa shooed Tony, Syd and MJ away to rake the infield. She wanted alone time with the rest of the team to make sure everything was alright.
“Things weren’t going well,” Mesa said reference to an 8-0 loss to the Norskies and a 3-3 start to the season. “I talked to the other girls because we were at the point of where we weren’t feeling like things were clicking.
“So I flat-out asked them, ‘Is what’s going on in our lives so hard for you that you want us to, maybe, have someone else coach?'”
Mesa wanted the girls to receive their full experience and not be held back by the extra stress that could be present. She said she knew the team would be fine with Syd and MJ playing but thought maybe she and Tony added to the equation might be too much.
“I’ll never forget Zoey Lichty looking at me and saying, ‘No, coach. We need you.’ Mesa recalled. “‘The team needs you here. The team wants you here.”
Syd, also a sophomore, said the discussion changed things only slightly because she always felt like the team was there to support her.
“When they first found out, I think they just gave me some space,” she said. “But then they started to check on me more to make sure everything was OK.”
MJ said the same thing happened in her situation.
“I felt like they didn’t really know how to approach me (at first),” she said. “They were there to play, and I wanted to be there to play because that felt like home to me.
“I definitely think we are all close, and through everything that has happened, I feel like we’ve gotten even closer.”
