It was Chris Huey’s final game before Christmas break during his senior year of high school and he made a move to the basket on the first play of he game. But the defender took a charge and Huey’s momentum took him to the ground.

One of Huey’s teammates running down the lane tripped, and one of his knees hit Huey in the back of the head. The other slammed into Huey’s rib cage. It was the latter that would be the start of a life-changing sequence of events.

“My collapsed lung didn’t really hit me until the next day when I was out shopping with some family,” Huey said. “I ended up passing out because I wasn’t getting oxygen to my brain.”

After the first time, Huey’s lung collapsed twice more during his freshman year at the University of Saint Mary (Kansas). He never ended up playing a game for the Spires due to health issues, and instead transferred to Kansas and became a student manager for the basketball team.

He’s had the position going on three years, and on Saturday, the 6-foot-7, 185-pound senior became the first student manager to play in an actual game in Bill Self’s 12-year head coaching tenure. It not only validated the work Huey’s done for the team behind the scenes, but fulfilled a lifelong dream for a 23-year-old whose future was once in doubt.

“You watch your child in a hospital bed, not really knowing what the outcome’s going to be,” Huey’s mother, Joanne Huey, said. “Just to be suited up was significant but to get in the game, honestly, it still seems so surreal.”

While running sprints on the third day of practice at St. Mary, Huey could tell something was wrong. It turned out to be his second collapsed lung, and forced him to re-evaluate his life, his mother said.

After his second surgery, Huey began to get back in shape. The surgery wasn’t effective, he said, because of his physical growth around his lung. One day, he just felt weird and it ended up being the third collapse.

“He had a lot of time with all three of them because when you have a chest tube, you have to wait for the chest tube to do its work,” Joanne Huey said. “And it’s 5–7 days sometimes before the lung’s in place again. He had a lot of time to think about life.”

Huey’s doctors told his mother that they’d never had any problems on such surgeries and that her son was the exception. By that point, Huey had already decided to transfer to live a normal college life.

Once he earned a spot as team manager in his sophomore year, Huey took up the responsibilities of setting up for practice, assisting in drills and doing the team’s laundry.

“It’s something that gave him the ability to stay with basketball even though he had to give it up,” Huey’s younger sister, Elizabeth, said.

In the time leading up to last Thursday’s practice, the KU coaching staff and student manager coordinator Larry Hare would ask Huey vague questions to indirectly find out if he was NCAA eligible and fully healthy without hinting that he’d suit up.

Then after practice, Self announced in the team huddle that Huey would wear No. 23 against TCU on Saturday. When Huey got to his phone, he first texted his siblings, Elizabeth and Andrew, telling them not to make plans for Saturday or tell their mother yet — which he did after taking a quick interview.

Two days later, a large Huey contingent sat anxiously behind the TCU bench as KU’s lead wavered between single and double digits as the clock ticked down. But with 35 seconds left, Kansas had stretched its lead to 11 and Self motioned for his student manager.

Elizabeth started sobbing and couldn’t hold her phone’s video camera straight. Joanne was crying and blocked the fans behind her after standing up, telling them, “I am so sorry, but that’s my son.”

“Walking to the scorer’s table and checking into the game was just an amazing feeling,” Huey said. “Being able to see the crowd come to their feet when I checked into the game was something that I’ll never forget.”

With less than 20 seconds remaining, Huey received a handoff from Wayne Selden Jr. near halfcourt, drove to the basket and put up a layup off the backboard that didn’t hit the rim or net.

“Nerves took it way too far,” Huey joked.

The standing crowd let out a collective “Aw,” but the moment wasn’t about the miss. It wasn’t about air-balling a layup in front of 16,300 people.

It was about someone who sat on top of a basketball when he was a kid, watching Kansas, claiming that he’d play for them one day.

“He doesn’t have the physique for it but I’ll tell you, he made his dream come true at the age of 23,” Joanne Huey said. “How many of us can say that?”

Published on February 25, 2015 at 12:20 am

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