Ryan Harrow – photo by Tammie Brown | WildcatWorld.com
From SI.com: “Ryan Harrow was the last person in his family to learn his father had suffered a stroke. It was June of 2012. He was leaving a summertime workout at Kentucky when his phone rang and his mother delivered the news with a strong and even voice, assuring her son he should not worry. She had waited a couple days to assess the damage before calling. She told him everything was going to be OK. Still, a jolt of dread and uncertainty left Harrow without similar patience.
I’ll tell them I need to come home, he said.
Soon he was on a plane to Georgia, and then eventually on a plane back to Kentucky. He didn’t want to return to Kentucky but did so at his parents’ behest. So he played a year for one of the most scrutinized programs in college basketball with excruciating conversations clouding his mind. During the painstaking recovery from the stroke, Harrow’s father talked about the inability to get up by himself, to dress himself, to use the bathroom by himself. As a man, his father said, it was just hard.
“He would be really emotional, and I tried to be strong,” Harrow said this week. “But at the same time, it was wearing on me. I think almost every game, I played with pain. ‘What’s up with my Dad? Who knows what’s going to happen next?’”
