Friday Features: Lee’s Lentz Back in Form After Heart and Hip Problems
By Chris Megginson
Tori Lentz is back where she wants to be, coming off the bench as a hustle player and defender for the Lee University Lady Flames basketball team.
Back? She didn't go anywhere. In fact, the junior from Powell, Tennessee played in 56 of Lee’s 61 games her first two seasons, but not without a different nagging medical condition each year.
In the last 15 months, Lentz has comeback from a heart surgery and a fractured hip. She says she now feels as good as she did before symptoms showed for either.
"It was a crazy season to say the least," Lentz said. "Overall, I feel so much better. It was a really hard transition trying to come back after both of those things had happened. Trying to feel I am back to normal is still hard … I don’t have that fear of being too tired or having pain. Getting back in shape, I’m feeling more confident about what I’m doing out there.”
This season, she’s returned to averaging 12 minutes per game with 12 appearances through Dec. 18, maxing out at 18 minutes in a Dec. 16 win over Alabama-Huntsville.
“She hasn’t been able to skill develop like we’d want her to (due to her injuries), but that hasn’t kept her from being vital to what we do,” Lee women’s basketball coach Marty Rowe said. “It’s a real testament of how tough she is and that non-quit spirit. The craziest thing about it is she’s that kind of kid on your team that has to play harder than anybody else, and then she goes through heart surgery and hip problems. She’s a great kid and a wonderful role model for everybody else.”
Lentz first noticed something wasn’t right during her freshman season in 2015-16. The 5-foot-10 forward had never had heart problems when playing at Powell High School, but she began to get fatigued quickly after only five minutes on the court. She was determined to work through it, dismissing it as possibly being out of shape. When she noticed her heart was racing, she thought she’d just had too much coffee. However, when the rapid heartbeat continued off the court following the season, including one night while just laying bed in her room or after barely doing anything in weights, Lentz and the Lee medical staff became alarmed.
"My heart would be pounding out of my chest and we hadn't done that much," Lentz said. "I can tell when I'm out of breath because we've been working hard, but this felt like I'd had three energy drinks."
Lentz and her athletic trainer visited a health clinic for an EKG, which showed abnormal results. A visit to a cardiologist revealed she had supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), a condition caused by an electronic misfiring in the heart that causes resting heartbeats of more than 100 beats per minute.
Medicine was the first course of treatment. A Spanish major, she was able to take a school trip to Colombia and just be cautious not to do too much. But after about five months on medication, surgery became the best fix. In September 2016, Lentz underwent endoscopic cardiac ablation surgery in Knoxville to cauterize and freeze nodes to create scar tissue on the heart, a procedure designed to reduce SVT symptoms and increase quality of life.
Lentz credits her surgeon for her ability to still play basketball.
“My surgeon was fantastic. She knew I was an athlete and she knew what to do,” Lentz said.
Rowe said the words "heart surgery" made him a "nervous wreck." It was something he'd never had a player go through in his now 20 years of coaching. It didn’t help when he was told she’d be recovered in as short as three to four days.
"She may have gotten me through the surgery because of the way she is," Rowe said. "The uncertainty of when she could come back was very uncomfortable for me, but she put me at ease. I think she taught us more lessons than we helped her."
Lentz returned to practice a little more than a week after her surgery and was ready to play by the start of her sophomore season. She resumed her role as a defender off the bench, averaging 9.5 minutes in 28 games and starting nine.
After getting in shape, her minutes increased from about four minutes a game to 13.5 minutes per game in January 2017, but she began to notice pain in her hip. She assumed she'd strained it from her additional cardio training to get in shape, but by February she began having a significant limp. As Lee geared up for the postseason, the team medical staff believed it was likely a torn labrum and considered giving her a cortisone shot to play out the season.
“If I was still able to play and work hard, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from doing what I needed to do to help the team,” Lentz said.
Before the medical staff would give a shot through, they wanted to confirm the diagnosis. On March 1, 2017, the day after playing Union University in the Gulf South Conference Championship Quarterfinals, Lentz went for a MRI and x-rays. She was told she had a pending stress fracture in her hip and couldn't support her own weight for eight weeks.
"I was laughing, 'Are you serious," Lentz said. "I was just playing the night before.”
She spent the next six weeks unable to apply pressure to the hip, which meant wheel chair rides through the mall in Birmingham during the GSC Semifinals and through the Atlanta airport on Lee’s way to the NCAA DII South Regional in Florida. Her teammates were there to push her in the chair and provide support whenever she needed it. All of the care and attention, along with her type of injury and illness, earned her the nickname “Granny,” which she embraces.
“My coaches and my teammates are probably what helped me get through it the most. They were so caring and supportive,” Lentz said. “Without them, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep a good attitude and get through it.”
Her attitude is one of the things that Rowe said has amazed him the most.
“She refused to allow those things to be an excuse for her,” Rowe said. “She’s a very mature, tough-minded person with a really stable family. I think you have to give a lot of credit to her parents (Steve & Melinda Lentz) and the support system she has around her.”
Lentz, who has also maintained her grades to be a two-time GSC Honor roll selection, says one of the largest lessons she’s learned has been related to how to deal with things that are out of control.
“The Lord has used this to show me different things about myself and different things I need to work on, as well as learning to trust him no matter the circumstances, and to not take the things I have for granted,” Lentz said.
Follow Megginson on Twitter @jcmeggs. Email comments to megginsonjc@gmail.com.
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