Cade Smith has never quit anything in his life and if you ask him that includes football, it was taken from him.

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       A lightly recruited football player from San Antonio, Texas, Smith committed to Oklahoma State University along with his twin brother Zach as a preferred walk-on in 2016. The two moved to Stillwater shortly after their senior year and completed summer workouts and fall camp.

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       “I got here and loved everything: my dorm, my roommates and my team,” Smith said. “I actually lived across the hall from Tyrek Coger, he was one of my good friends on the basketball team.”

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        Little did Smith know Coger would play a much bigger role in his life than he could ever imagine.

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       Shortly after arriving on campus, Coger died on the steps of Boone Pickens Stadium during conditioning training for the basketball. As a result of his death, Oklahoma State immediately began heart testing every athlete on the campus.

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       Most of the athletes’ results came back normal but that was not the case for Smith and fellow teammate Josh Mabin, both who’s results came back with abnormalities. Mabin’s results showed he had an enlarged heart, forcing him to immediately give up football, Smith’s situation on the other hand was more complicated.

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       “They realized I had three severe things wrong with my heart,” Smith said.

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       The doctors diagnosed Smith with Bicuspid Aortic Valve Disease, Left Bundle Branch Blockage and Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome.

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       Refusing to give up on his dream of playing college football, Smith decided to undergo surgery to fix his heart. The complicated procedure consisted of freezing an extra node in Smith’s heart that was misfiring only .2 millimeters away from his regular nodes.

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       “It was hard for me not to be there for my brother because I was still busy with all the stuff on the football team,” Smith’s brother Zach said. “We had always done everything together and I felt guilty not being there for him.”

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       After the first surgery failed, Smith was advised by doctors to give up football after being told another surgery would be to risky and could result in irreversible damage to his heart. Smith had a predicament on his plate. Give up the sport he grew up loving and dreaming about or risking it all to try and repair his heart a second time.

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        “I had just got to college and really hadn’t experienced anything yet,” Smith said. “I was really hard headed and was like, nah I want to do it, I’ll do it.”

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        So Smith, along with both of his parents, headed to Oklahoma City for a second procedure. At first glance the doctors at Oklahoma Heart Hospital thought the surgery was a success, but after a few days of observation, they broke the news to Smith that it too had failed.

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        Again, doctors advised Smith to retire from competitive football and this time with a more definitive probability that his career was over. The doctors in Oklahoma City refused to attempt another surgery for fear it may build too much scar tissue endangering Smith’s life further.

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       Without a doctor to preform a third surgery, the Smiths began to lose hope of ever saving Cade’s football career, until one day the phone rung. A doctor from Austin and a leading expert in the field was willing to preform the procedure. It was the Smith’s last chance.

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       Just weeks before the Cowboys began their 2016 football season, Smith underwent his third and final operation and this time it worked. The extra node was successfully frozen and all looked clear. Unfortunately, there was another curveball heading its way at the Smiths.

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      The operation though successful, had taken four hours too long and an excess amount of scar tissue had developed around Smith’s heart, putting him in danger of further complications moving forward.

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       Smith began to move forward with caution through therapy and after weeks of rehabilitation, he began to feel one hundred percent again.

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       “I told out Dr. Ivan, OSU’s sports doctor, I was ready to come back,” Smith said. “Unfortunately that’s when he told me he would probably never clear me.”

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       Two days before Oklahoma State was set to open its new season Smith made the hardest decision of his life. He talked to his teammates, his coaches and most importantly his family and told them all he had to call it quits. Smith made his decision to retire from football public later that day when he tweeted out: “The hearts not something to take lightly,” followed by an official statement explaining his situation.

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       “I became depressed and for a few months I didn’t want to do anything,” Smith said. “I didn’t want to go out, go into public or anything like that because everywhere I went there was someone saying, ‘Hey bro I’m sorry to hear about what happened’ or ‘Hey how are you holding up.’”

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       “Cade showed extreme toughness though it all,” Smith’s friend John Kolar said. “He would always brush it off when people asked how he was doing and even though he seemed fine, I knew he was hurting.”

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       With most of his close friends on the football team, at practice and at team meetings, Smith began finding himself alone a lot of the time with a lot of extra time he wasn’t use too. After months of dwelling and sitting around, Smith began to realize there’s a lot more to life than just football.

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       “I knew Cade was struggling with this huge void in his life and we tried to encourage him that when one door closes another one opens,” Smith’s mother Cathy said. “I told him eventually he was going to have to hang up the cleats and it was a lot better to do it on his own terms healthy, rather than by another devastating way on a stretcher.”

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       Through the help of his parents, friends and former teammates Smith began to become more independent and started working on self-improvement. Since retiring football and adjusting to the changes in his life, Smith said he has seen incredible strides in his moral, his schoolwork and in his overall attitude toward life.

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       “I know it’s kind of cliché but it really opened my eyes to a whole new world,” Smith said. “At first when I came to OSU I came here to play football not to school, but since then I am now a completely new person. Things have happened causing me to make significant changes in my life and I am better for it.”