As the University of Kentucky class of 2026 spent its first month on campus, Tionna Herron could only watch her college classmates via a Snapchat story.
From Herron’s home in DeSoto, Texas, she watched her fellow UK freshmen having fun at Kentucky Wildcats football games and eating in “The 90,” a campus dining facility.
“There were over 2,000 people in that Snapchat story, and it looked like everybody was having fun on campus,” Herron says. “And I was at home.”
Having to undergo open-heart surgery in August of one’s freshman year of college tends to put a crimp in one’s plans for campus life.
“Tionna Herron” will always be the answer to a University of Kentucky sports trivia question. A 6-foot-4 center off of a powerhouse DeSoto High School team, Herron was the first recruit to commit to UK after Kyra Elzy replaced Matthew Mitchell as Wildcats women’s basketball head coach.
In choosing the Cats, Herron said no to scholarship offers from Arizona, Florida, Florida State, Louisville and Mississippi, among many others.
Yet after she first reported to Lexington this summer for UK’s preseason conditioning, Herron began to experience chest pains.
Those raised concerns because Herron, from the time she was found to have an abnormal heartbeat at age 8, had been under the supervision of a cardiologist. “At that time, her chest pain she was complaining of was thought to be muscular,” says Angel Worlds, Herron’s mother. “At that time, it was ‘Just take Ibuprofen and keep doing your every-five-year checkups.’”
In August of last year, however, Herron underwent a pair of surgeries unrelated to her cardiac care.
Over the course of those operations, doctors detected an abnormality in Herron’s heart they had not before noticed. A CT scan revealed that Herron had a rare congenital heart defect, Anomalous Aortic Origin of a Right Coronary Artery, that is seen in less than 1 percent of people.
In layman’s terms, “Her artery wasn’t where it was supposed to be,” Worlds says.
To determine whether or not Herron would need surgery, doctors performed a series of tests. “And they were all normal,” Worlds says.
That allowed Herron to play her senior season of high school hoops. Though playing on a DeSoto team that featured six other NCAA Division I signees in its class of 2022, Herron managed to make her own mark.
While helping DeSoto to its second straight Texas Class 6A state title, Herron averaged 12 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots a game.
In back-to-back games last winter in an ESPN-sponsored girls’ basketball showcase in Minnesota, Herron faced the nation’s top-ranked player, 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts of Colorado’s Grandview High School, and its top-ranked team, Sidwell Friends School from Washington, D.C.
Herron dropped 16 points on Betts, then came back with 19 against Sidwell Friends. Those performances encouraged the idea that Herron might start in her first season playing for Elzy at UK in 2022-23.
‘My hands were shaking’
When Herron reported to Kentucky this summer, Worlds says the same tests doctors had given her daughter in Texas to determine whether she should have heart surgery were repeated. “They were normal, too,” Worlds said.
However, once Herron complained of chest pains in workouts, medical personnel at UK reasoned that her condition is so rare, it made sense as a precaution to have a specialist examine her. Herron was sent to Georgia’s Emory University School of Medicine. “The specialist there ... recommended she do a heart catheter — where they stuck a little camera in there,” Worlds says.
That procedure was performed in July. “That’s when it was discovered she had restricted air flow, which probably was the cause of her having chest pains,” Worlds says. “All the other tests, had been normal. That was the only one saying, ‘OK, there’s something wrong.’ And that’s when we made the decision to correct this issue.”
On the night before doctors at Houston’s Texas Children’s Hospital were slated to operate on her heart, Herron told herself not to be afraid. “I wasn’t scared,” she says.
However, in the early morning of Aug. 24, after Herron was wheeled back for surgery prep, “as soon as I got in that room, I was shaking,” she says. “You could tell my hands were shaking.”
An eight-hour surgery yielded a successful outcome and a repaired heart. Yet recovery from open-heart surgery creates its own set of challenges.
“My neck was sore,” Herron says. “My back was sore. For like, two or three, weeks, I was so sore.”
An SEC-caliber athlete now felt like she had to relearn how to walk, how to breathe, even how to sleep. Normally a side-sleeper, in the immediate aftermath of her operation, Herron was mandated to sleep on her back. “I had never slept on my back,” she says. “It was terrible.”
In the days after her surgery, Herron endured one setback, when fluid formed around her heart and she had to be readmitted to Texas Children’s Hospital.
“I was terrified that night, because I didn’t know what was wrong with her,” Worlds says. “That was one of the things that worried me the most. Yes, the surgery was a success, but unexpected complications come up ... that you don’t know the outcome of. That was the scariest part.”
Kenneth Horsey’s advice
On Oct. 1, roughly five weeks since open-heart surgery, Herron left Texas to come back to the University of Kentucky. Due to her situation, Herron is taking online courses only in her first UK semester. She continues to undergo post-surgical physical rehabilitation.
As a scholarship basketball player, Herron faces a challenge beyond merely returning to school. As of yet, there is no timetable for her to resume any form of hoops activity.
“We have committed as a staff and as a team,” says Elzy, “to continue to encourage (Herron) and keep her engaged as she tries to get back on the basketball floor.”
There is another Kentucky Wildcats athlete uniquely positioned to understand the issues Herron will have to surmount to return to her sport. Kenneth Horsey, UK football’s redshirt senior offensive lineman, had open-heart surgery in 2018 but has recovered to become a three-year starter on the Cats’ offensive line.
“I think the hardest part is the mental aspect,” Horsey says. “(It is believing) that you are still (the athlete) that everybody believed in and are capable of doing the job that is necessary to be done. The physical part, when it comes to recovery, of course, it is difficult, too. Of course, it is hard. But I believe the mental part is even more important.”
If he could tell Herron one thing, Horsey says “the biggest piece of advice I could give her is ‘Make sure that she talks to somebody, a professional, whether it is a therapist of someone else like that. Make sure that you treat, not just the physical aspect of your recovery, but also the mental aspect.’”
For now, Herron is happy she no longer has to view UK campus life via Snapchat. But it eats at her that her new Kentucky teammates have never seen her play basketball.
“I just want to show my skills and how I play my style of game,” Tionna Herron says. “I just want to get back on the floor.”
