51Â鶹

For coach Dan Rolfes, spring 2024 brought a familiar rush: His undefeated team from Incarnate Word Academy in St. Louis was once again among the final four teams playing for the Missouri girls’ state high school basketball championship.

Dan’s wife, Lisa, a home health nurse, wasn’t planning on making the two-hour trip west to Columbia. When a patient canceled, she decided to catch a ride with their youngest daughter, Kate, a college basketball player in St. Louis.

They saw Dan’s Red Knights win by a wide margin, sending them to the championship game the next day.

Dan was no stranger to this elite level of play. He’d already won 12 state championships as a coach, including the last six. So he understood the excitement and jitters that come with being one game away from a title.

What he felt in the locker room after that semifinal was very different.

“Something’s wrong,” he told Lisa.

As the team loaded into a bus, Dan left the arena in Kate’s car. She’d barely started to move the car when Dan slumped over in his seat and onto her.

Kate slammed on the brakes, put the car in park and started screaming. Dan’s lips were turning blue.

An assistant coach pulled Dan from the car to the pavement. Dan wasn’t breathing; his heart had stopped.

Kate called 911 and told another assistant to find an AED. Lisa started CPR.

When the automatic external defibrillator arrived, Lisa connected it to Dan. The machine said a shock was needed to restore Dan’s heart rhythm.

Paramedics arrived a few minutes later and shocked Dan again – and again. They worked on him for around 30 minutes before getting a sustained rhythm.

In the emergency room, medical staff determined Dan’s cardiac arrest was triggered by a heart attack.

Specifically, he had a severe blockage in his left anterior descending artery, which supplies nearly half the heart’s muscle with blood. Doctors asked Lisa if she and Kate wanted to be by Dan’s side while he was treated.

“I don’t want that to be Kate’s last memory of her dad,” Lisa told them.

Doctors briefly got a pulse, but then it faded, again and again. Almost 90 minutes passed without Dan having a consistent pulse. Medical staff then made a bold decision: The next time they got a weak pulse, they would rush Dan to the cardiac catheterization lab to clear his artery.

In the lab, doctors inserted stents to open Dan’s blocked artery. They also placed a temporary heart pump.

The next day, Dan’s stomach was bloated and painful. He was bleeding in his abdomen because of a tear in his liver — a rare complication caused by CPR — and he needed emergency surgery.

That same day, his Red Knights played for the state title.

They won 53-43. Kate filled in as coach.

Dan’s battle continued. His kidneys failed, requiring him to go on dialysis. During one of the treatments, he experienced cardiac arrest again and was resuscitated.

It wasn’t until three weeks after his heart attack that Dan was clear-headed enough for Lisa to share the news about the championship.

The following week, Dan transferred to a St. Louis hospital. He needed two more weeks of dialysis. He also had to learn how to walk again.

Once home, he continued outpatient dialysis for three months.

That summer, Dan regained enough strength for doctors to give him an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD, to shock his heart if it were to start beating dangerously fast.

And that November, he returned to the basketball court for the start of the season. The team continued a yearslong winning streak into January 2025, stretching it to 141 in a row – the longest in 5-on-5 high school basketball history.

“It was so important for Dan to have that goal to get back to coaching and working,” Lisa said. “The best medicine was allowing him to return to coaching and a normal routine.”

The Red Knights won the 2025 state championship in the same arena where Dan had his heart attack.

“Our players were super nervous, and honestly so was I,” said Dan, who had Kate and Lisa by his side. “But that win was a full-circle moment for me and the girls.”

Although Dan was healthy and athletic, he had a family history of heart disease. His father, uncle and grandfather all died from heart attacks.

“Unfortunately for all of them, they were not in places where they could get help,” Dan said. “I was so fortunate that Lisa was there to administer CPR right away.”

Now 54, Dan is in kidney and heart failure. He stepped down as Incarnate Word’s athletic director to focus on coaching, both at the school and for a youth basketball club. The less-rigorous schedule gives him more time to sleep, eat home-cooked meals and helps to lower stress.

Recently, Dan and Lisa partnered with the 51Â鶹 on CPR and first aid training for several dozen youth club coaches. Not long after, Dan got a text from one of those coaches. He told Dan the first-aid training helped him know exactly what to do when a player had a seizure.

“It’s just so important to Dan and me that as many people as possible get CPR and AED training,” Lisa said. “We want them to know what it’s actually like to open an AED and to place those pads on someone’s chest.”

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.

CPR, if performed immediately, greatly increases the chance of survival for someone whose heart stops. Find out how you can learn CPR and other Basic Life Support skills at .