Less than four months from open-heart surgery, Nam helps Maize back to state soccer
Andy Nam was told this summer that he would likely never be able to play soccer again after undergoing open-heart surgery.
Less than four months after that proclamation by his doctor, Nam not only returned to the field for the Maize boys soccer team, but he has scored a goal and assisted on another during the playoffs to help lead Maize back to the Class 5A semifinals for the first time in more than a decade.
The top-seeded Eagles (16-2-1) will play Andover Central (11-8) at 4 p.m. Friday in Spring Hill.
“It’s incredible this kid is even walking, let alone being able to play competitive soccer again,” Maize coach Mike Pfeifer said.
“To be able to be scoring goals and assisting my teammates again, I don’t think anything can be happier than that,” said Nam, a junior forward said. “Soccer is everything to me. Nothing is better than playing soccer, so I’m so happy right now.”
‘He’s like my brother’
Growing up in South Korea, Andy Nam fell in love with soccer at the age of six.
When it came time for him to enter high school, he told his parents he wanted to go to school in a foreign country.
“I thought it would be a challenge,” Nam said. “I wanted to try to play soccer in a different country and see how good other players are compared to me.”
Nam was matched with a host family and arrived in Wichita in 2018 and enrolled at North, where he played soccer his freshman year.
“It was really tough,” Nam recalled. “I remember the first day I got to the U.S., I couldn’t speak any English, not even a single sentence.”
The first year proved to be a difficult transition for Nam, but a bright spot was the first good friend he made in America in Max Shea, a teammate on his club soccer team at FC Wichita. The two quickly became friends, which helped accelerate Nam’s understanding of the English language.
“He was this foreign kid who was really, really quiet and no one really got to know him,” Shea said. “But I got to know him and he’s such a great kid. He has good morals and we became friends pretty quick.”
Shea and his father, Scott, would pick up Nam and take him to practice, to games and to out-of-town tournaments. One day Max, a midfielder at Maize, joked at the dinner table that it would be cool if Andy could just live with them.
Instead of laughing off the suggestion, Scott Shea thought it was a good idea.
“We were already having to go pick him up and go to all of the same places for soccer, so I just kind of thought, ‘Why are we not hosting him?’” Scott Shea said.
Nam moved that summer and played his sophomore season at Maize, where he earned first-team all-league honors at forward after scoring a team-best 11 goals. On and off the field, Nam and Shea bonded together.
The Sheas consider Nam part of their family.
“He moved in and we’ve been having fun ever since,” Max Shea said. “He eats dinner with us every single night. We’re always cracking jokes and doing something together, like playing FIFA or just games and hanging out. He’s like my brother.”
“I treat him no differently than I treat my own kids,” Scott Shea said. “I have a promise to live up to with his parents who are in South Korea. His dream is to become a collegiate athlete here in the United States and in order to do that, he’s got to keep his grades up. So he has the same rules, same expectations.”
That’s why it was so stunning when they discovered earlier this summer that Nam would need open-heart surgery, a decision that would send him back home to South Korea in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
‘I just wanted to play soccer again so bad’
During club season this spring, Nam felt a tightness in his chest that caused a shortness of breath during games.
He went to a local doctor, who discovered he had a major blockage in his heart that would require open-heart surgery as soon as possible. After discussing with his parents, they determined the best way to go forward was for Nam to fly back to South Korea for the surgery and recovery.
“I cried a lot as soon as the doctor told me that I had heart problems,” Nam said. “The first question I asked was if I could play soccer and she said, ‘Probably not.’”
Forget soccer, Max Shea said he was scared for his best friend’s life when he heard the news.
“It was so terrifying honestly because it’s open-heart surgery, so a lot of things could go wrong and you never know what could happen,” Max Shea said.
On July 4, doctors performed open-heart surgery on Nam. But his heart kept racing after the procedure, which forced doctors to cut him back open three days later to fix the issue. Nam, 17, said he couldn’t walk for two weeks and that he was retained in the hospital for a month following the surgery.
“People told me that I could still come back from it and I was hoping that I could, but I did kind of give up,” Nam said.
But Nam’s recovery went well enough for doctors to release him and he returned to Wichita in time for the school year in August.
Returning to live with the Shea family and being around soccer again lit the fire for Nam to hope to get back to playing the game he loved.
“I just wanted to play soccer so bad again,” Nam said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be 100%, but I thought I could help the team.”
‘It is a miraculous return’
Nam’s recovery continued to progress and he was released by his doctors to run again in October when his ribs had finally healed.
He was out of playing shape, but he reported no complications to doctors and his tests showed no irregularities. Finally, he was given the go-ahead by doctors to start playing soccer again.
“I can’t even imagine the struggle he’s had to go through to being able to get back here and play competitive soccer again,” Maize coach Mike Pfeifer said. “But I wouldn’t expect anything less from Andy. He’s an amazing kid.”
Nam began by running on a treadmill, then he was eased back into training with the soccer team, starting with non-contact drills. It soon became apparent Nam would be able to play again this season.
A week before Maize’s highly-anticipated, regular-season finale against Maize South on Oct. 22, Maize coach Mike Pfeifer held a meeting with his team. The dilemma: Nam needed nine practices before playing in a game, per the rules by the KSHSAA, and there were only seven days before the game.
If Nam was to be eligible, his teammates would have to practice twice a day and on the weekend.
“It was unanimous, they were 100% for it,” Pfeifer said. “I knew the answer, but I wanted them to make the decision and for them be included in the solution. This was their own free time and they gave that up to come in at 6 a.m. in the morning and come back at 8 p.m. at night.”
It was an easy decision for the players according to Max Shea because “Andy is the most popular player on the team.”
“He’s always smiling at everything and he’s always one to bring others up,” Shea said. “And then obviously his technical quality is really good, so people appreciate him for that. But overall, he genuinely helps us when we’re down, picking all of us up with his smile and energy.”
Although he has been nowhere close to his level of play from last season, Nam’s return has coincided with Maize playing its best soccer of the season.
In Nam’s triumphant return from open-heart surgery, Maize handed Maize South its first loss of the season with a 2-1 victory. In three playoff games since, Maize has topped a 12-win Eisenhower squad and knocked off Maize South, once thought to be the Class 5A title favorite, again en route to its first state semifinal run since 2008.
“It is a miraculous return,” Scott Shea said. “It’s been fantastic to see him back out there on the field.”
As Nam’s conditioning improves, so has his contributions. He had a spectacular assist with an over-the-top ball to spring a goal against Great Bend in Tuesday’s quarterfinal match, but his most stunning moment came in the final minute of Maize’s first playoff game last week.
With Maize clinging to a 1-0 lead, a header down the sideline sprung Nam on a breakaway. He headed it forward, sprinted toward goal and with a defender closing in and the keeper charging forward, Nam kept his composure and slotted the goal away between the Eisenhower keeper’s legs.
“That goal meant a lot to me,” Nam said. “That made me really happy.”
In less than four months after open-heart surgery, Nam had not only returned to playing soccer — he was back to scoring big goals in big games.
It was a powerful moment and his strength has helped propel Maize to its best season in more than a decade.
“I’ve seen his comeback every step of the way and it’s been incredible,” Max Shea said. “I saw him sitting in his bed doing little workouts to coming back to practice and now coming back in games. He’s slowly been building, building, building. That goal against Eisenhower meant so much to us the players and the coaches because that was Andy’s announcement that he was back.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 5:10 PM.
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