“Make me an angel…”
Dateline: Sacramento, California
“Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds.”
~Bill Bradley
In our soul, lies the climb, not the obstacle.
Hold on.
It is the human spirit that holds on, holds on, when the brain says, let go.
Let go.
“db, it is all I’ve wanted to do since I was 8 years old…”
Hold on.
“…but…but…I don’t….”
Let go.
We are in the middle of Day 1 weigh-in, controlled chaos in the park, and yet, yet all I hear is whispers. A whisper, then silence.
“….I don’t know…”
Silence.
It is 93-degrees, we are sitting under a tent, the cover and a breeze cool it down to mid-80’s.
Sweat rolls down my back.
Tears stain the cheeks of Kevin Ledoux, “…just don’t know…”
Kevin has just crossed the weigh in stage, crossed with just one fish.
In his two previous tournaments this year he has caught a total of 5, FIVE fish, finished in 87th place one tourney, 110 in the other.
I look at the man crumpled into a folding chair across from me, look at the man who can barely speak, the man is choked up, the man has his head in his right hand, head down, arm resting on his knee, he just keeps rubbing his face, his eyes are red, his left foot is shaking up and down, I look at this man and in my mind I’m thinking…
…I’m thinking.
Thinking…
…top 10 athlete I’ve ever covered. Yep.
This man…
“…db in a couple weeks I have to see the Neurologist again…”
…this sportsman……
“…the last MRI may show I need a 3 level fusion of my spine…”
…this guy who…
“…and if I do that would be the end of my career…”
…against all odds…
“…but when I drive my boat, most times I can’t feel my feet.”
…still launches.
“…that flies from Montgomery…”
“He beat, Can’t,” is the only thing I want scrawled on my tombstone.
I cover sports because I learn from those who beat “Can’t.”
Beating “Can’t” is the soul of sports. I see no other reason to play the games.
“Sports do not build character. They reveal it.”
John Wooden
I have in decades of covering athletes, never had one tell me this as they take to their field of play, “My hands, I can’t feel my hands sometimes and my feet, my feet go to sleep.”
And yet, Kevin Ledoux, still competes.
“It’s what I love to do, db, love to do, I’m not making excuses, I just have to get better, I just have to get better at what I do.”
Get better at what I do, this from a guy who just a year and a half ago, damn near died.
“In November of 2013 I had lower back surgery, supposed to be just routine, but it wasn’t, I started to have excruciating headaches turns out I was leaking spinal fluid out of the stitches.”
An MRI revealed a tear in his spinal cord, “So I had a second surgery that month to repair the tear but while I was in the hospital I got a staph infection.”
As Kevin is telling me this he is getting more and more emotional, not about what happened to him but, “…db I just can’t imagine what my wife went through during all of this because, because…”
At this point Kevin pretty much melts in the chair, his body just folds on into itself.
What Kevin is trying to tell me is that while being treated for the staph infection he basically went into a coma for 4 days.
“…because Cara…because Cara worried bad about me…”
Kevin and Cara are good friends of mine, they showed up unannounced, unasked to volunteer help at a Tackle The Storm event that we ran in Oklahoma in 2012.
This is what Cara told me when Kevin called her and handed me the phone, here’s the conversation.
Me: “Kevin tried to tell me about those four days in the hospital when he was like in a coma, what was going on…”
And with that, Cara took a deep breath, and couldn’t speak for about a minute.
“…just give me one thing…”
Came the whisper of a loved one, “db, I thought I was going to lose him, I didn’t know if I was going to get him back.”
And I was suddenly quiet for a minute or so, across from me, Kevin just stared out into space.
Cara: “db it was the scariest thing I have ever been through in my life, he couldn’t open his eyes, he couldn’t speak, he lost control of all bodily functions, every 3 hours or so the nurses would come in and roll him from side to side, I thought, I thought…”
And slowly I handed the phone back to Kevin, something told me that Cara still needed to know he was still there.
Kevin put the phone up to his ear and for the next few minutes, all he did was listen.
“…that I can hold on to…”
After a week or so Kevin was sent home with a PICC Line in his arm, “I shot antibiotics into it 3 times a day for 6 or 7 weeks.”
Kevin is pretty much your working stiff kind of guy, he works in the oil fields of Oklahoma, “But I was so sick and still recovering from the surgeries that all I could do was sleep, slept a lot.”
For a year he was out of work, “wasn’t work related so I didn’t get any pay.” In 2014 B.A.S.S granted Kevin a medical exemption from the tour.
“I’m back to work now, worked 62 hours the week before I left to come here, the week that I came here I worked 46 hours Monday through Thursday, left on Friday for this tournament.”
His sponsors, Allen Oliver’s (a seasoning product) and Midwest Cooling Towers, help with some of the expenses, but most of the nut it takes to crack this game, he has to crack on his own.
“It’s hard to juggle both, working full-time and doing this, I don’t get to pre-fish these lakes, I pretty much see the water for the first time when I show up to the event.”
I didn’t say anything when Kevin said that, I held back, wanted to see which way the man would go, what path he would take.
“But that’s no excuse, I choose to do this, I knew the deal going in, I ain’t making any excuses, it is what it is and I knew it coming in.”
In my book, that was the right path.
“…to believe in this living…”
“Used to watch Bob Cobb on The Bassmasters on TV when I was a child, knew then that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up. To be here now is so special, so special. I think it is the coolest thing in the world.”
As Kevin says this behind us a roar comes up from the crowd watching the weigh-in, Chris Zaldain just weighed in with a huge bag to take the lead in the tournament.”
In front of me, Kevin who finished 2nd from last this day, smiles and says, “That’s pretty cool, Chris needs a win, it would be good for him, I’m happy for him.”
It was that sentence that convinced me to do this story.
It was that sentence that elevated Kevin Ledoux to my top 10 athlete list.
Those of us who love “The Game,” love the spirit of competition, the spirit of sports whatever sport it may be, we have to hope, we have to pray, that Kevin, and all those like him…hold on.
Hold on for them, hold on for us.
Kevin, shows us, hold on, is possible.
It is not the obstacle that beats us, CAN’T is what makes us lose.
Kevin Ledoux makes my sportsman wall, my angler of this, and many years.
Two days before he left to come here and compete he met with his Neurologist for yet another MRI, he will know within days if a 4th surgery is needed, surgery he said, “that could end it all, end of my career, don’t know what I’m going to do.”
This morning, he launched once again, he may or may not feel his feet, he may or may not feel his hands, he is 29 pounds out of the lead.
But he launched.
That launch, lost in all the hoopla of leaders and big bags, that launch to me, is the soul of this sport.
I will do everything I can to help Kevin in this game, even if it comes down to me telling him he has to leave it to protect his health.
Protect Cara and their family that one day will come.
I don’t know how this will turn out for Kevin, I hope and pray for the best on all fronts.
I do know though that The Game is better with his spirit in it.
I do know though that I am better from getting to know his spirit
In our soul, lies the climb, not the obstacle.
Hold on.
Thank you Kevin for holding on,
for all of us out here,
who also dangle in the game called, life.
Hold…
“…is just a hard way to go.”
Angel From Montgomery
John Prine
db
“It’s part of life to have obstacles, it’s about overcoming obstacles that’s the key to happiness.”
~Herbie Hancock