MIDWAY, Ky. - As she speaks about a string of health issues that put her life at serious risk, Sammy Friel's tone seems to belie the severity of the situation.

Last spring, Friel was on an emotional high after a breakthrough junior season with the Midway women's swim program.

A multi-faceted talent who's competed in wide array of events, Friel broke 10 program records during the 2023-24 season. She capped off what she called "the best month of swimming I've ever had," by earning a trip to the NAIA National Championships in March, where she qualified for both the 200-yard individual medley and the 100 butterfly.

The following month, she joined friends and family members in a recreation softball league in Lexington, thinking it would be an enjoyable and casual way to keep herself in shape during the offseason.

"It was just supposed to be for fun, but it didn't end up being fun," Friel said in an assessment many would consider to be a massive understatement.

Trouble started when Friel planted awkwardly while rounding first base. She went down with a non-contact injury that ended up being an avulsion fracture in her right leg, where her patella tendon split from the bone.

Already needing surgery, Sammy's health only worsened in the coming weeks. Further problems arose when she began experiencing painful cramping in her calf, which turned out to be a blood clot.

At that point, Sammy was still hoping to heal quickly enough to fly with several members of her extended family for a planned trip to Disney World. Those hopes ended the day before their scheduled departure, when her fitness bracelet recorded a resting heart rate of 120 beats per-minute.

Despite resistance, Sandy Friel gave her daughter an emphatic "seven-minute warning" to get ready for a trip to the emergency room. Once there, it was revealed that Sammy had a pulmonary embolism, a condition causing blood clots in both of her lungs.

With her mom and fiancé Luke Logan at her bedside, the news continued to get worse, with clotting moving into her heart.

She was immediately put on blood thinners, but if that proved unsuccessful, doctors said she'd need a risky surgical operation. The clot in Sammy's heart was behind a valve and if dislodged, it could move to numerous other parts of the body, including her brain.

The only silver lining seemed to be the timing of the discovery.

"The biggest miracle is that she didn't step on the plane, because that probably would have killed her," said Sammy's father Greg Friel, who worried the elevation could have moved the clotting to her brain and caused a stroke. "We weren't sure how serious it was at that point."

Sammy spent the next several days in various states of distress, hoping the blood thinners would do their job as her mother and fiancé alternated shifts at her bedside.

While outside the hospital room, Sandy admits she was an emotional mess, often breaking down into tears while on the phone with her husband, who'd left for Florida at his daughter's insistence before realizing how severe the situation had gotten.

She did, however, keep her emotions in check in Sammy's company, in part because a breakdown would not have been well-received.

When discussing all she went through last spring, Sammy's tone is consistently flippant. Whether sarcastically saying it was "so, so cool" to break her leg or analyzing her hospital stay as her "just chilling for awhile," she says she never felt compelled to wallow in misery, even when her life appeared to be in legitimate danger.

"I've had a lot of people tell me they would have been freaking out and they would have been crying the whole time," Sammy said. "But that doesn't help, you know? If I start freaking out or anything, that's when everybody's going to be more concerned. So if I'm acting like I'm ok, everyone else will feel a little better about it, in my opinion."

That tactic proved to be successful.

"I was in awe," Sandy said. "I don't know if she wanted to think about how serious it was, but she was just answering the questions, joking like she always does, being nice to everybody. Just big smiles. That's just Sammy."

Fortunately, reasons for positivity would quickly return to the Friel family. Five days after being put on blood thinners, Sammy's heart rate had leveled out enough that her doctors were comfortable discharging her.

Since then, life has seemingly returned to normal. After getting a makeup trip to Disney in August, Sammy returned to Midway in the fall to begin her senior year.



And though her times haven't been as strong as she hoped, she has still found a great deal of success in the pool.

Hoping to get another invite to nationals, Friel has hit qualifying, 'B' standard cuts in the 200 IM, the 100 breast and the 100 and 200 fly. She can greatly improve her national chances this week, when she and her teammates take part in the Mid-South Conference Championships in Danville, Ky.

While her lungs have held up well, Sammy says her surgically repaired leg has proven to be more of a hindrance than expected, claiming she's still hesitant to push off the wall with full force.

But even at less than 100 percent, she seems to be peaking at the right time, having earned five combined wins in Midway's last two duals of the regular season.

With how close she came to losing literally everything, Sammy says she does a new level of appreciation heading into her final postseason.

"It's just funny how things change so fast in a year," she said. "But I'm proud of how I reacted to everything...not freaking out and being like 'Oh no, it's all over.' I understood I did have one more year I can try for this and that's what I focused on."

Unsurprisingly, thoughts of more issues arising in the future don't occupy much space in her mind.

"There's no reason to stress about it because it (isn't) even in my control," Sammy said. "I've always been like that."

The Mid-South Conference Championships begin at 10 a.m. Thursday before concluding on Saturday.