BALTIMORE -- Doctors learned early in the pandemic that COVID-19 was more than a respiratory disease. It was attacking bodily organs, including the heart — even in healthy, young athletes.
Enough athletes with COVID were experiencing heart inflammation, called myocarditis, that doctors at the University of Maryland and other Big Ten schools didn’t want to take any chances.
Myocarditis already was seen as one of the leading causes of sudden death in elite athletes, so doctors across the conference immediately imposed official protocols that kept some players off the fields for up to six months. Some grumbled, but everyone recovered.
