, was at the peak of his 18-season NBA career. In 2002, two years after Asjia was born, O'Neal was named the league's most improved player, charming fans with his outgoing personality and tantalizing promise with the Indiana Pacers. He took Asjia with him to most every game, and by the time she walked and talked, she was on TV, in her father's arms, celebrating his career with him.
Basketball aside, Asjia was like her father in most every way. A day before competing in her fourth-grade spelling bee championship, Asjia ran around their Miami house, performing one-handed cartwheels. Jermaine stopped her and said,"Asjia, you need to settle down and study for the spelling bee if you're going to have any chance of winning it." Midway through a cartwheel, Asjia said,"Dad, I'm going to win it.
Just as she began to feel like this might be her sport, she received some shocking news during a cardiology appointment in Boston: Her mitral valve leak had gotten worse in the past year. The intensity of her volleyball training was the likely cause, her doctors told her parents. "My daughter ... has a chance to be one of the best volleyball players in the country," Jermaine O'Neal told theat the time."College coaches are already calling about her. She has a leaky valve that's making her heart work too hard. ... I'm positive everything will go well.
To Asjia, it's all a blur now."I was so young. I remember recovering so quickly and going out there and playing and feeling great." Asjia O'Neal, who stands 6-foot-3, has impressed coaches and frustrated opponents with her uncanny anticipation, hand-eye coordination and fluid movement. very wrong. I don't know if I can do this," Asjia said to Mesha on the phone after one of her first spring practice sessions during her redshirt freshman year at Texas in 2019.
"She never wanted to accept that her heart [condition] prevented her from doing certain things that other people could easily do," Mesha said. It was on that last day of spring training that O'Neal's doctor told her that she shouldn't play volleyball anymore. The previous tests hadn't picked up on her deteriorating condition.
"I had no idea, because it was the same protocol -- some days I would feel bad, some days I would feel better," said Asjia, who had a .413 hitting percentage and averaged 1.48 kills per set through the first 19 matches of that 2019 season."But I thought this might just be the reality of me playing sports."
TexasVolleyball asjiaoneal Man I’m old 😞
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