It’s been more than two months since Angel City FC defender Savy King collapsed on the field midmatch, and for the first time since the scary incident, she is speaking about what happened and her recovery.
In an interview with Good Morning America’s Will Reeve, King said she doesn’t remember much of what happened on May 9.
“I remember that I wasn’t feeling right, and I grabbed my leg because I was trying to distract myself from the fact that I was going to pass out,” King said. “I remember the staff coming onto the field.”
The Angel City medical staff rushed onto the field, resuscitating King and giving compressions before she was taken to a local hospital.
Cedars-Sinai surgeon, Dr. Richard Kim, said King suffered a form of heart attack due to an underlying congenital heart abnormality.
“Savy was born with an anomalous left coronary artery," Dr. Kim said. “The left coronary is the most important blood vessel in your heart, and when it’s anomalous it means that it’s in a slightly different location than normal.”
Dr. Kim, who led King’s surgery team, said the first responders on the pitch and their quick thinking prevented any permanent damage to her heart.
Angel City’s Director of Medical and Performance, Sarah Smith, was one of the many professionals who rushed to King’s side in the moments after her collapse.
“For it to happen on that night in our home stadium here, we had our entire medical team there,” Smith said. “It was an incredible work of that group and the timing that it actually happened to have the outcome that we had.”
Though King isn’t cleared to return to soccer just yet, all signs point to her eventually returning to play.
“I was just so happy that I was going to be able to recover and be as normal and almost be a Savy 2.0 now,” she said. “So I’ll be back and better than ever.”
When she does, she’ll do so with gratitude for those on the sidelines who sprung into action on her behalf.
“They saved my life. That will stay with me forever in my heart, and just knowing that I get to play in front of them too and say that they were a huge reason why I’m here,” King said. “I play for them now too.”
It’s not just the medical team that King is playing for, either. Her moms, Karrie King and Kim Parker King, were by her side throughout the ordeal and were with her as she returned to watch her teammates practice for the first time since her surgery.
When Reeve asked what her mothers mean to her, King couldn’t hide her emotions.
“They are everything to me. I’m going to start crying,” she said, tearing up. “I wouldn’t be here without them. I can’t even continue talking about it because there’s not enough or anything I can give them. The rest of my career, the rest of my life is for them.”
While King works to return to the pitch, she is learning to be patient with herself in her rehabilitation.
“Every time I see soccer, I want to play. It’s obviously so hard to just watch and not be able to play,” King said. “Even just watching games just to have a different perspective now that I can’t play, just seeing a different part of the sport is really cool.”
While she’s working to get back to the sport she loves, King is also using her platform to highlight the importance of CPR training.
“Anything can happen at any time,” she said. “I think just knowing how to do CPR is super important because it can save a life, and it saved my life.”
You can watch the entire GMA interview in the video below.
