This Saturday, Kyle Young and CJ Walker will experience the usual Senior Day hoopla. Their families will be in attendance at the Schottenstein Center, and their contributions to Ohio State’s basketball program will be honored on the day they wrap up the regular season against Illinois.
For a while, this day was supposed to include Abel Porter, as well.
Eleven months ago, the 6-foot-3 guard chose to transfer from Utah State to Ohio State where he planned to spend the final season of his basketball career while pursuing a graduate degree in finance. But Porter’s time as a basketball player ended before he ever had a chance to play a minute as a Buckeye. Doctors diagnosed him with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – a rare heart disease – in October. In essence, they told him he could never play competitive basketball again.
So, Porter has watched from afar as the Ohio State team he was supposed to play for became a top-10 team in the country.
On Friday afternoon, Eleven Warriors gave Porter a call to catch up before Senior Day. He won’t be in attendance on Saturday, though he was offered the chance. He’s working in his hometown in Utah while earning his Master’s Degree from Ohio State via online classes and plans to be in Indianapolis to watch the Buckeyes try to make a run in the NCAA tournament in person.
Here’s our conversation.
11W: In the months leading up to the season, what was it like going through the preparation to play for a new team across the country during a pandemic?
Porter: “I was just excited, honestly. Not only just being at Ohio State but being a part of something new. I remember going through the recruiting process. It was different because I couldn't visit anywhere, and I never even met coach Holt or coach Pedon, who recruited me, in person. I just did Zoom calls and phone calls and texts with them. When I first got to Ohio State, it was kind of like a visit. It was like an official visit, you know what I mean? It was getting a feel for, OK, where did I commit to spend my last basketball season and what type of people are these? Really quickly, I learned that, oh, I made the right choice. This was what I thought it was when I was going through this. Because it was so hard to kind of determine where I was going to go with all these coaches and all these different Zoom calls.
“Very early on, that's kind of the first thing I remember is, OK, I made the right decision, I'm in a good spot. And then, as I started getting to know my teammates and kind of working out and playing some basketball with them, the next thought was, and we're going to be good, too. Like, not only is this a good coaching staff, we're going to be really good. And I knew that in the summer. A big thing was coming over from the Mountain West, which is a great conference and awesome basketball players historically, a different type of athlete, honestly, in the Big Ten at Ohio State. Just different size. I mean, we're not the tallest team. Everyone knows that. But just body build, different athletes. That was the other thing I had to get used to. It was kind of all just like a culture shock type of thing in the summer. It all came together all at once. Overall, I was just excited. I was happy. I was ready to go and excited to start playing basketball again.”
11W: How long were you able to work out with the team, and can you take me through what happened on that one day where everything changed?
Porter: “We were doing lifts. We did it in the summer. And then I went home just a couple weeks before everyone usually goes home for the summer for the birth of my daughter. Everything was normal. I had started to get back in shape and we had gone through our lifts. Besides COVID restrictions, it was just another year basically. So when we came back for school, we were doing just a normal thing, maybe an individual workout. And that was up until around mid-September, maybe late September. That's when you do the 6 a.m. conditioning thing. Late September, we had this 6 a.m. conditioning session just like normal. Had done it for weeks now. That's when we were conditioning. The weird thing was is we had just barely started. We were running hills outside, and we had done it before, and honestly it was not our hardest conditioning and I was kind of excited that it wasn't our hardest conditioning.
“We had just barely started. We were going to run 20 hills or something like that, and we had ran one, and I was like, whoa, I'm really tired, kind of huffing and putting after one. I was thinking, 'That's weird. We ran 18 of these last week and I was fine.' So then we ran two and by that time I was like, geez, I can hardly breathe, why is this so hard? Maybe I didn't warm up, maybe I didn't get enough sleep. I don't know, normal athlete thoughts. It's not like, 'Oh, I'm hurt,' or anything like that, it's like, 'Did I drink enough water this morning before I came out here?' And then by the time I got to the top of the hill on my third one, I was basically walking to the top. Kind of was getting light-headed. My chest was starting to hurt, but I didn't really think anything of it.
“I think we went to run our fourth. I was dragging. I basically walked up the hill on my fourth. Like, I couldn't even do it. Of course, you've got everybody yelling at you, 'Come on, push.' I'm like, I'm trying, I promise. So the trainer started coming over to me because he could tell something was wrong. I basically kind of collapsed. Luckily, he was there, I think I would have hit the ground. He kind of caught me. As I kind of lost (consciousness), my eyes rolled back kind of thing. He helped me lay down. I was fully with it, but my heart was racing. I was breathing super hard and had no idea what had just happened. After 15 or so minutes, I felt fine. I was almost embarrassed, you know what I mean? It was like, oh, I'm probably out of shape.
“Stuff had happened before in high school. I had passed out playing basketball. I had gone through all the heart screenings and everything, and it just never really told me anything was wrong. I felt like I had even more of a reason to be like, 'I'm just a wimp. I just can't handle the conditioning.' I think that because of COVID, you had kind of heard of myocarditis and stuff, so I think that they were being extra careful. It's not every day that someone passes out and they just send you to go do a heart MRI, you know what I mean? I think that they were being extra careful with all of that going on, so generally when they would be like, hey, you were dehydrated, get some water and go home and rest, they ended up saying, hey, let's go take you in and get your heart screened. That's kind of when the whole process started happening.
“So, late September, I go in. No one's expecting to find anything. I did a heart MRI, and a couple days later when my results came back, they kind of said, 'Hey, we might have found something. Your heart is slightly enlarged, and you're borderline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or however they said it. 'You're borderline hypertrophic,' is what they said. 'But in order to confirm that, we want to run a genetic test because that's how you'll know for sure.' I'm just kind of like, OK, whatever, let's get this over with. Because at the time, they weren't letting me do anything until I got cleared. So I was kind of just going to practices and workouts and just standing around and trying to do what I could, but no one would let me do anything.
“They gave me a genetic test, and what I didn't know is those take almost a month to get results. So I sent my genetic test in and they said, yeah, you'll have to wait a month. Can't do anything for a month, and depending on the result of this test, you might not be able to do anything ever again – like, play basketball at least, play competitive sports. That was probably one of the hardest times was that month period where, so now we're getting into October, we're kind of getting ready for the season, that's kind of the time period where all of our games were changing. Basketball season's becoming a little more real, and I'm not really getting to take a part of anything because I still had to be held out.
“The results came back, I had to go meet with the cardiologists. He kind of sat me down, was awesome, really nice. He said, hey, it's confirmed. Test came back positive. I had my wife there with me, which was awesome. She was there to support me because it was really hard when he told me that. He walked me through next steps. ‘We're going to have to get you scheduled for surgery, checkups for the rest of your life, blah, blah, blah.’ I just kind of spaced out after he said you can't do anything anymore. I'll never forget that day, for sure.”
Isaiah J. Downing – USA TODAY Sports.
11W: What did you do from there, because you came all the way across the country to do this one thing, and then you can't do that? How did you process that and somehow find a way to move forward?
Porter: “I think I talked to coach Holt pretty quick after that. I had come across the country. I was trying to figure out where I was going to fit and everything. The next day, I was shocked. I had told coach Holt that I would go to practice – I think the next day was a Saturday – and I don't even think I went. I just stayed home. I felt bad, but I just stayed home with my family and didn't want to leave the house, didn't want to do anything. It was kind of like from there on out, it was how am I going to approach these next few months? Where do I fit in with the team? It's even deeper because it's COVID, (Ohio State) only (has) a certain amount of daily tests available, only a certain amount of people are allowed to travel. In a normal year, it would be like, oh, you're just around. It's even a weirder year for this to happen. So is it worth it, like, 'Oh, Abel, you want to be a part of the team? We only can travel this many people. You'd take this person's spot just to sit on the bench.' Just stuff like that I had to start running through my head.
“Obviously, I have a wife and a kid, so it was like, OK, at the end of this I'm going to have to provide for them. The next week, few weeks, was just planning, honestly. I would go to practice and I would hang out and kind of just sit around. But then practice is over and I don't have to get recovery, I don't have to stay in the locker room, I don't get to hang around everyone. It's kind of just like, OK, now I'll just drive back home and come at the start of next practice. It was just awkward, I guess, is kind of his I'd put it – not that anyone made me feel that way. I felt awkward just because I wanted to be doing what everyone was doing and couldn't. I'd never been in that situation before. Even now, kind of finding where I fit into places has still been kind of hard as I've gone through stuff.”
11W: How would you define your place on this team? How often are you around the team, in practices, in meetings?
Porter: “Originally, I was planning on kind of just showing up in practices and meetings and being a part of the team. That was kind of how it went. I think the first week of December I got surgery, and I went home for all of December. So basically I wasn't with the team from the end of November, because I had gone home for Thanksgiving, and then I came back and got surgery in December, and that's when COVID restrictions were really tight. So, even though I was there and I really wanted to go to a game, they wouldn't let me. They were like, ‘You have to finish your two-week quarantine.’”
“Long story short, I got surgery, couldn't go back there, so after I got surgery and was good enough to walk and get on a plane, I just flew back home to recover from surgery. Me and my wife got COVID at the end of December, so that pushed it back to like mid-January when I came back – January 10th. I had basically been gone from the team for like two months, right? That was another challenge in like now how do I fit in? So I started going to practices, being a part of the team, seeing everyone. I went to a few games.
“I needed something to put my energy toward. I'm getting a degree in finance, so I started applying for jobs and kind of just looking around just like a normal student, I guess. I'm a graduate student. All the people I'm in classes with were applying for jobs in the fall and trying to get offers. Kind of started doing that so that when I get to the end of this year, I just don't have no plan and nowhere to go. It was nice because it gave me a sense of a place to put my energy. So where I would usually have this time to all go toward basketball, it was like, OK, now what do I do with all of it? I ended up getting a really cool job opportunity, and because school was online, they were like, hey, do you want to come out to Utah right now and you can work part-time for us while you finish school? I ended up taking that.
“Obviously I'm in Utah right now. I still feel like I'm part of the team, but obviously my first priority was to take care of my family. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that just being close to my family as in all my siblings and everyone is out here and just kind of being in Ohio, it just kind of still makes me sad honestly. Sad, mad. Going to games is really, really hard for me. It's like torture almost. It's like you're so close. So I still feel like I'm a part of the team. I still talk to the coaches weekly. I am in the team group message. Sometimes I kind of go back and forth on maybe I should have just not did this stupid job thing, but I don't know. It's still undecided, honestly. It's nice to have my energy go toward something.”
11W: What's been a favorite moment involving this Ohio State team?
Porter: “I would say probably back in workouts. My favorite memories came from when I was playing. One of my favorite memories is the first time that I got to Ohio State. I drove across the country by myself. Just pulling up to the Schott and kind of just realizing it's real. I'd been to Columbus to play but had never seen campus or anything. That was probably my top memory is just kind of realizing, wow, I'm here, this is going to be great. And then just hanging around the guys in the locker room. I don't have a specific moment that I would share, but just getting to know everyone. It's a great group. Hanging out with them for the time was pretty awesome.”
11W: Lastly, if you were to put your basketball analyst hat on, why has this season gone so well for Ohio State?
Porter: “That's super funny that you ask because I was talking to one of my friends about this. It kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier. It's like this unexplainable, you can't see type of thing. It's not that they're the best shooting team. They're obviously not the best team on defense. The pieces fit, if that makes sense. Guys know where they're at. The biggest part, and this is a credit to coach Holt and the coaching staff, is they've built a culture on what expectations are, what attitudes should be. There's no egos on the team. There's no kind of me-first type of attitudes. And honestly, that's rare at a big program like Ohio State.
“Not saying that all big programs are like that, but a lot of times when you're at a big program – and this is my really big analyst hat, so take it with a grain of salt – you get five-star kids and four-star kids that want to be good. It's not as much of a team of a team attitude and a team culture, and those teams are still really good. But here at Ohio State, coach Holt has made a team-first culture that's centered around winning and doing it together. I think you're seeing the fruits of that culture show in the success that the team's had this year.”
