Open-heart surgery can wait. Stevie Wisz has a season to finish.
Wisz, a UCLA senior softball player who has suffered from heart ailments virtually her entire life and wears a pacemaker to keep her heart beating, postponed her latest major operation in order to help the Bruins reach the Women’s College World Series.
The 22-year-old will then walk in graduation June 13 to receive her bachelor’s degree in biology, before undergoing the procedure on June 21.
“I give so much of my life to that team and they give so much to me, I didn’t want to miss out,” Wisz told ESPN.com in a lengthy feature. “Not just the game, but the memories.”
Since making the decision after her latest medical episode in January, Wisz has limited the intensity of her workouts, but has remained an active member of the third-ranked Bruins.
“We told her we would support her with whatever she wanted to do, but it was her decision,” her father, Steve, told the website. “She was emphatic. ‘I’m not missing school. And I’m not missing softball.'”
Wisz was diagnosed with aortic stenosis — the severe narrowing of the aorta — when she was 1. She underwent her first heart surgery when she was 9, and was gifted a Make-A-Wish trip to Florida.
Wisz picked up softball when she was instructed to eliminate sports requiring endurance from her life, remaining a passion even after a pacemaker was installed at 10. Wisz underwent another heart surgery — at UCLA — when she was 15, and spent a week in intensive care recovery, where one of her lungs collapsed.
Despite describing herself as a “mediocre” player in high school, Wisz begged UCLA’s coaching staff for a tryout as a freshman and earned a spot as a practice player, before soon being promoted to the regular roster, where she has primarily been used as a defensive replacement, and most notably made a homer-saving catch at the fence against Florida in last year’s Women’s College World Series.
“She could have gone somewhere else and started somewhere else, but there was a bigger picture she was after,” assistant coach Lisa Fernandez said. “She wanted to represent the people who gave her life. She will forever be remembered as the definition of what it means to be a Bruin.”
