After Shocking Collapse, Soccer Star Focuses on Recovery

When professional soccer player Savy King talks about her on-field collapse, it is with the same calm demeanor that helped her survive. King didn't feel like herself while playing in a National Women's Soccer League game in May.

"I knew something wasn't right, and the best thing to do was to sit down so that I could get the medical attention I needed," said King, a defender for Angel City FC (ACFC).

During that infamous match, King stood up to kick a ball that was passed to her but slowly went down again. Next, everything went black. King was having a heart attack at 20.

ACFC physicians, including Tracy Zaslow, MDand Rachel Triche, MDof Cedars-Sinai rushed onto the field with ACFC head athletic trainer, Hollie Walusz, who performed life saving CPR, preventing permanent heart damage. King was transported to Cedars-Sinai, where she had emergency surgery to correct a heart defect she didn't know she had.

It was a dramatic turn of events for a woman who started playing soccer at 10, declared at 12 she wanted to play professionally, and was selected with the second overall pick in the 2024 National Women's Soccer League draft at 18. A year later, she joined ACFC.

King is one of millions of people who undergo heart surgery every year and face a long recovery.

"This is the first major injury I've had, so it's been a lot of me figuring things out," she said. "Having a huge support system has been the biggest thing and also being able to just feel all the emotions I'm feeling."

When Cedars-Sinai cardiologist Seth Lichtenstein, MD,reviewed CT scans of King's heart, he discovered one of the large arteries that feeds blood to the heart was showing an extremely narrow opening-like a road that was nearly blocked off.

"Her left coronary artery was so narrow that it was unable to deliver blood to the heart effectively," Lichtenstein said.

Lichtenstein diagnosed King with an anomalous left coronary artery, a rare condition that fewer than 1% of people are born with. Most people with an anomalous artery don't learn about their condition until they have symptoms so severe that a doctor orders imaging or when they have imaging for an unrelated reason. The type of anomaly that King had is the kind that typically requires surgery.

"This congenital lesion can be especially dangerous," said Richard W. Kim, MD, director of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery at Cedars-Sinai. "It can lead to a heart attack, stroke, heart failure, or even sudden death."

Kim led the team of doctors who performed the surgery, creating a new pathway for the blood to get to the artery.

Next came King's recovery. After six weeks of physical therapy at home, King began a cardiac rehabilitation program in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. Three days a week for three months, she exercised under the guidance of physicians and nurses while hooked up to monitors that displayed her heart rate and rhythm.

King, who projects an upbeat positivity, felt a kinship with other patients who did cardiac rehab.

"I remember talking to one woman who kept saying she was so happy to see that even after you have surgery, you can still go about life and be happy," she said.

King is grateful that ACFC had medical experts available to resuscitate her. Cedars-Sinai is the team's official healthcare partner, and health system physicians regularly care for players and sit on the sidelines at games.

Zaslow, a sports medicinephysician, said that because not all sports teams have access to doctors, it is important that adults, especially coaches, know how to perform CPR.

"In this case, we had trained personnel ready to respond, but what if something like this happens somewhere else, like a kid's soccer field or even an airport?" she said.

Recent imaging shows King's new artery pathway is feeding her heart as it should. She's back to working out alongside her teammates and hopeful to be playing competitively again soon.

"I had to trust the process and know that everything I'm doing is for the greater purpose of being on the field again," she said. "Having love, support, and prayers from not just my family and friends but nationwide has really helped me get to the other side of this."

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