Heart attack at 25 moved Tavon Rooks from NFL to high school coaching

Even in the triple-digit temperatures of June in Phoenix, Tavon Rooks is excited to be on a football field. It’s in a vastly different capacity than what he imagined as a top offensive lineman at Kansas State in 2014.

Now, it’s about teaching kids life skills to go along with football skills as Paradise Valley High School’s offensive line coach.

Nine years ago during a Monday morning Kansas City Chiefs training camp workout when he was 25, Rooks felt like someone was sitting on his chest. He was left in tears after finding out he had suffered a heart attack.

Coach Tavon Rooks teaches his players at the Paradise Valley High School football field on June 10, 2024.

His football career was over. He had a 1-year-old child at the time, and he had to figure out what to do with his life. The first thing was to return to Arizona where he had a brief stay with the Cardinals to get the medical help he needed.

Now 34, with a new perspective on life, he lets kids know not to limit their goal in football but at the same to have a Plan B.

“I share my story with them,” Rooks said. “I tell them what I did right and what I did wrong. Hopefully, I can create a path where these young men are very successful. That’s what I hope to create for this newer, younger generation.”

Rooks said he had a hard life growing up in Baltimore and trying to avoid pitfalls. He was hardly recruited out of high school at 6-foot-5, 240 pounds. He was going to attend a junior college in Maryland, then move to California to play at College of the Canyons, before going to Texas, to play on scholarship at Navarro, which won the national junior college title while he was there.

He ended up signing with Kansas State, where at 280 pounds, he played in a Fiesta Bowl for coach Bill Snider and was an All-Big 12 honorable mention. But he never figured he’d get drafted.

The…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/heart-attack-25-moved-tavon-130014207.html

Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic

Publish date : 2024-06-23 13:00:14

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