Olympia volleyball rallies around teammate

ORLANDO — A freshman on the Olympia High School varsity volleyball team, Gabby Nye keeps a low profile of sorts.

The team is full of seniors and veteran players, and the Gotha native is trying to soak up as much of the varsity experience as she can.

Nye works hard, and, according to head coach Mitch Sadowksy, she takes coaching very well and is improving with each passing day.

It’s no wonder then, that given Nye’s low-key personality, the girls on the Titans’ varsity roster had no idea that their talented young teammate is just two years removed from an emergency open-heart surgery procedure.

That changed on the afternoon of Sept. 22, though, as Sadowsky and Nye shared with the team that that day marked the two-year anniversary since her discharge from the hospital following the procedure.

“It probably got a little bit dusty in the gym when we were talking about it,” said Sadowsky, who admits he was also shocked by the revelation, which he learned about just days before the team. “The first thing that happened after we got done talking about it is Martina (Shamley), one of our seniors and our captains, just said, ‘Can we give you a big hug?’ And, we just had a huge group hug.”

Although Nye said she has no problem explaining to people what happened two years ago, she generally doesn’t bring it up on her own. Sharing her story with her teammates, though, has proven to have been a rewarding experience for the freshman.

“It was exciting, because I knew that they had my back,” Nye said. “I’ve made a lot of friends, and they’ve just become another part of my family.”

Shamley, a veteran for a program that has been to the regional finals of the state tournament in three of the past four seasons, said the revelation changed the way the older girls looked at Nye.

“She’s a freshman, and we usually pick on the freshmen, but we took her under our wing,” Shamley said. “We saw she has the potential to go far.”

DIAGNOSIS

Nye was preparing to enter the seventh grade in July 2012, when doctors discovered she needed surgery to repair a pectus excavatum, or concaved chest. After that procedure, she began to have pain and shortness of breath, leading her to check back into the hospital in September.

A long list of tests determined she had a collection of fluid and blood around her heart, which doctors attempted to drain. Worried that a complication from the previous procedures might have damaged Nye’s heart, the cardiovascular surgeon overseeing her care felt an emergency open-heart surgery procedure was necessary, and on Sept. 17, 2012, that procedure was performed.

Although Nye didn’t quite grasp exactly what was going on with her body, she remembers being frightened and having one worry, in particular.

“I was scared, because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to play volleyball again,” Nye said.

Luckily, Nye’s heart wasn’t damaged, and the fluids around her heart her were able to be successfully drained during the procedure. Once discharged from the hospital, Nye began a rehabilitation process that lasted roughly eight months.

“I had to be careful of how I stretched my arms and what I did; I couldn’t pick up more than 10 pounds for a while,” Nye said. “I didn’t have a lot of feeling, so I’d have to touch the scar (from the surgery) to try and get the nerves and tissues to feel again.

“I still don’t have all of my feeling back, but I do have most of it,” she said.

WORKHORSE

After her initial rehab, Nye began to rehab further for her return to the court. The Gotha teen has played club volleyball for Top Select Volleyball since the sixth grade, and her coaches there worked with her through private sessions to help prepare her for a return to the court. Eventually, she was able to play her eighth-grade season for Gotha Middle School and now finds herself in the unique position of being a freshman on the varsity roster of a program with plenty of volleyball tradition.

“We brought her up (from junior varsity) to help us out in practice, and she’s done a great job in practice, and she’s done a great job in the matches that we have put her in,” Sadowsky said. “She’s just a workhorse — which is just incredible with her medical history.”

Sadowsky has coached the Titans to many wins during his years with the program, but the veteran coach said the opportunity to share Nye’s story, and any life lessons it might help his players understand, is more important than results on the court.

“For our program, that’s the most important thing,” Sadowsky said. “I deal more with character and life lessons than I do with X’s and O’s.

“They’re going to learn a lot of volleyball in my gym, but a lot of them won’t go on past this,” he said. “If they leave our program (as) better people, then I feel like I’ve done my job.”

As for Nye, she has enjoyed the experience of being around her teammates, working on her craft as a player and being a part of big games against rivals like Apopka and West Orange. Now that she has shared her story with her teammates, she said she is focused on the future and excited for whatever comes next.

“It’s behind me,” Nye said. “I’m trying to push it behind and move on.”

Contact Steven Ryzewski at [email protected].