Longtime basketball coach on life-and-death experience: 'I really shouldn't be here.'

CARMEL — When Doug Mitchell retired as North Central basketball coach after the 2017-18 season, Walt Morris thought his coaching days might also be behind him. It had been a great run for Morris, who helped Mitchell win two state championships and coach four Mr. Basketball winners in 20 years.

“I’d coached for 37 years,” Morris said. “I’d been a head coach.”

That semi-retirement lasted all of five days. Scott Bowen, who had been Morris’ varsity assistant at Brebeuf in the 1990s, coached the girls basketball team at Carmel and was familiar with Ryan Osborn, was coming off a Class 4A state runner-up finish in his first season at Carmel.

Osborn did not have any openings at the time, but after meeting with Morris it was clear he had the passion and experience to help the Greyhounds staff. It paid off right away. Carmel won the state championship in 2018-19 in Morris’ first year with the program.

“He just kind of did whatever,” Osborn said. “He stays busy. He’s coached with a Hall of Fame coach, been a part of state championship games.  He’s a guy you don’t have to give responsibilities to. He just works to make the program better.”

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Morris, 63, is low maintenance. As reliable as a Steph Curry jumper. Osborn tasks him with tracking how opposing offenses are scoring during games. Sometimes, assistants lose track of responsibilities.

Not Morris.

“Three minutes into the game they are into the game and might forget what they are supposed to be watching,” Osborn said. “At halftime, in the middle of a game, end of practice, he can tell me exactly what those guys are doing. If you give him something, he does it really, really well.”

That consistency honed by 40 years of coaching did not really translate to Morris’ own health, however. Not that he wasn’t mindful. But the former Noblesville basketball standout passed off the dull pain in his jaw as a headache, soothing it with ice and Advil. The shooting pains in his neck? He would go to the doctor and get it checked out eventually.

In the summer of 2022, while helping coach Carmel at a team camp at Purdue, he started sweating profusely. He was also having trouble swallowing. “I didn’t say anything,” he said. “I should have.”

About a month later, on the morning of July 25, 2022, was finishing up his 3-mile walk. He was about a quarter mile from his house when a jolt radiated through his jaw and knocked him to the ground. “I’ve never felt anything like it before or since,” Morris said.

A young man saw Morris and helped him to his house, where his wife Lisa was home from work on her last day recovering from back surgery. “If she’s not there I’m taking Advil, sticking ice on my face and laying down,” he said.

Instead, thankfully, Lisa recognized he might be having an issue with his heart and rushed him to the emergency room at Riverview Hospital in Noblesville. He was put through a series of tests. “They couldn’t find anything (wrong),” Morris said. Dr. Felix Alva-Valdes, a cardiologist with Ascension Medical Group told him to spend the night and get an electrocardiogram ultrasound test done the following morning. He agreed.

“All of a sudden, Dr. Alva appears in front of me (after the test) and said, ‘You have an aortic dissection,’” Morris said.

The severity of the situation makes Morris emotional even more than a year later. He was told it was possible he had 30 minutes to live and making it through surgery was not a certainty. He was rushed to Ascension St. Vincent Heart Center in Carmel, where he would undergo an 11-hour surgery.

“I was in a little bit of shock,” he said. “The young men in the ambulance did a great job of taking care of me. Something inside of me said panicking right now isn’t going to do any good. My faith is strong. I didn’t ask to be saved. I prayed for my kids, my granddaughter, my wife, my sisters. I tried to stay as calm as I could. I can’t explain it, but I had a real peace.”

Morris later found out he was born with a bicuspid aortic valve that was passed genetically from his father, the late Ed Morris, who survived an aneurysm when he was 69. Morris was supposed to be in the hospital for 10 or 11 days.

One of the first people he saw at the hospital after surgery was Mitchell.

“You’ll do anything for attention,” Mitchell joked.

Morris was home just six days after his surgery. It took a while for him to comprehend what had happened in such a short amount of time. But as he sifted the “get well” cards from players he had coached starting as a middle school coach at Noblesville in 1981, to Hamilton Southeastern as a freshman coach and varsity assistant, to an assistant at Indian Creek to Noblesville as an assistant for his former coach, Dave Nicholson, to Brebeuf Jesuit as an assistant, then head coach, to North Central, he started to get the picture.

“It brought me to tears reading all of this stuff,” Morris said. “I’ve been spoiled to be around such great people.”

At the same time he was undergoing surgery, a 38-year-old man was having the same surgery in another hallway. He did not make it. The razor’s edge between life and death was never more clear to Morris.

“I was pretty grateful to my life, but every day is heightened in value now,” he said. “It’s not a given. You can’t walk around scared something is going to happen to you. But I think, ‘How can I be of more service in any capacity?’ I’m trying to take that up a couple of levels.”

With that thought in mind, Morris wondered how he might be able to help others avoid the same situation. “I rationalized (symptoms) and blew it off,” he said. “It almost cost me.” Morris approached Osborn during a break in Carmel’s team practice in June to get his thoughts on how he could get the word out to a larger audience.

“He’s always about purpose,” Osborn said. “He wants to have purpose, wants to have impact. He wants to live out his life giving value to other people. That’s just the type of person that he is.”

Osborn pitched the idea of making a video with Carmel’s social media team they could post on various platforms. If that was not successful, they could try something else. Morris spent a couple of weeks working on what he wanted to say. He whittled it down from three or four minutes to a tighter message of 1 minute, 23 seconds.

“It was like preparing for a game,” Morris said with a smile. “Josh McRoberts said, ‘You have to hit them early with the information.’ I kept working on it.”

On July 26, a year after Morris’ surgery, the video was published on Carmel basketball’s social media accounts. On Twitter, the video has more than 29,000 views. In the video, Morris says ignoring his jaw pain, neck pain and trouble swallowing led to his life or death situation.

Morris also failed to bring up his family history with his family physician.

“It’s not part of anybody’s regular physical checkup,” he said. “It will not be brought up unless you tell them it’s in your family history and explain your symptoms. That’s what I’m trying to hammer away.”

Morris transitioned back into coaching last season, at first just a few days at a time, then every day. Osborn said he has talked with all of the Carmel coaches one-on-one about the symptoms of aortic dissection.

“He’s passionate about helping people through his experience, which has been cool to see,” Osborn said. “Working with him every day, his loyalty is second to none.”

Morris said he is “not a hang-around-guy” when it comes to coaching. He is uncertain how long he wants to do it, though he feels reenergized after the surgery. He has lost 30 pounds from increased exercise, mainly walking. And he is reenergized in other ways.

“I’ve always been a coach where if I made a mistake, let me have it,” he said. “You’re not going to have to say that to me again. I’m going to fix it. Once I learn something, I don’t forget.”

The coach in Morris wants to take what he’s learned and help others. Now it applies to his health, too.

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Carmel basketball coach Walt Morris survives aortic dissection surgery