Kansas State University Athletics
SE: You Will Win This Battle – A Letter from Coach Snyder and a K-State Soccer Legacy
Nov 12, 2020 | Soccer, Sports Extra
By: Austin Siegel
"You're probably never going to play sports again."
Imagine a list of people who have gotten that news. Now take away everyone at the end of a long athletic career, the adults who have thought about life after sports.
Think of a kid hearing that, who never suffered an injury and didn't know anything was particularly wrong. Picture yourself in middle school, sitting in the emergency room and listening to the words "never going to play sports again," from someone you've never met.
"I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know the extent of what was wrong," Maguire Sullivan said. "It came out of nowhere."
She traveled around Kansas playing soccer on her club team and went out for volleyball as a libero - a position that requires you to basically throw yourself onto the floor and dive after every ball. She even played basketball and ran track.
For Maguire Sullivan, never playing sports again just wasn't going to work.
Sitting on the steps of Buser Family Park almost eight years later, the first commit from the third recruiting class in K-State Soccer history is surrounded by evidence this doctor was wrong.
But all the way back in middle school, someone else Sullivan had never met wrote her a letter.
And in purple ink with an unmistakable horizontal font, Bill Snyder got it absolutely right.
Sullivan grew up with a Will Spradling jersey, a Collin Klein jersey, a Rodney McGruder jersey and absolutely no plans to ever go to school at K-State.
"Her mind was made up," Tomara Sullivan said. "She was playing college soccer. So, we knew that we weren't going to have a Wildcat."
Back when their oldest daughter was tearing it up on the youth soccer fields outside of Wichita, two alums crossed Kansas State off Maguire Sullivan's college list. It wasn't for lack of trying.
Justin and Tomara Sullivan met at K-State and haven't missed many football or basketball games since then. The two-and-half-hour drive from Andale? Not a problem.
"We probably came up here once a month," Maguire Sullivan said. "Their favorite restaurant, well I guess our favorite restaurant, is Rock-A-Belly, so sometimes we would just drive up for lunch."
Legendary ham-and-cheese sandwiches were great but didn't change the college conversation.
To make matters worse, Sullivan also played plenty of sports that K-State did offer, between basketball, track and volleyball. But nothing could compete with college soccer.
Even though that dream meant that K-State was no longer a possibility, Sullivan was preparing to focus on her high school soccer career as she wrapped up the eighth grade.
And then she passed out.
It started happening during basketball games and track meets, but sometimes, Sullivan would be sitting in class when her heart would start racing, faster and faster.
She went to the hospital after a CrossFit workout with her soccer team. Her heart had started racing again, before Sullivan finally passed out.
Her Mom picked her up and it was off to the emergency room in Wichita. That was the first time she heard about Supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT.
"Her electrical system was messed up," Tomara Sullivan said. "And they had no clue why."
That was enough, for at least one ER doctor in Wichita, to tell Maguire that she was done playing sports.
"She was devastated," Tomara Sullivan said. "We were like, 'You have no business telling her this.' So, we went to a pediatric cardiologist and his information was to put her on medicine."
Justin Sullivan called this the beginning of the "Why me?" phase, as his oldest daughter worked through the pain of watching her favorite sports ripped away from her in middle school.
Not by an injury, but something as simple as her heartbeat.
The next stop for the Sullivan family was Kansas City.
Maguire was wearing a heart monitor and taking medication to stop her heart from racing, two things the doctors in Wichita had told her that she would need for the rest of her life. That would have made playing sports impossible.
Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City had another option to diagnose and correct the problem: exploratory heart surgery.
Even with a word like "exploratory" in front it, heart surgery is still heart surgery. But for Sullivan and her family, this was the second opinion they were hoping for.
"The doctor in Kansas City reassured her, 'You're going to be fine. You'll play sports again.' She was just ready to get it over with," Tomara Sullivan said.
The answer turned out to be something Sullivan was born with, an extra pathway in heart.
Surgeons froze this pathway to prevent her body's electrical currents from entering that part of Sullivan's heart. This kept her heartbeat steady without medicine or a pacemaker.
It also meant that Maguire Sullivan, the volleyball, basketball, track and soccer player was back. Almost.
"Getting back in shape was pretty difficult," she said. "Once I hit a peak, my heart would start to race again. They told me just to take it slow, that it would be fine. I had to get my heart back in shape because it had undergone a little bit of trauma."
Sullivan spent three months slowly building back her cardio. The opportunity to get back on a soccer field was the light at the end of the tunnel during a difficult rehab.
And then she got a letter.
A portion of the note, typed in purple font, reads:
God has brought you through difficult times before, and I know He is going to help you make it through this one too. Until he does, our prayers are with you. Your faith and trust will make things better each day. May the Lord bless you and be with you and yours in a very special way.
Written across the top, is a handwritten note:
Proud of you Maguire. Keep up the fight. You will win this battle. And thank you for being a great Wildcat fan.
Warm Regards,
Bill Snyder
"I didn't know it was coming," Sullivan said. "It just came in the mail and I remember feeling very happy and special. And I was inspired."
Snyder, then in his 23rd season as head coach of the Wildcats, has written similar notes to opposing players who have been injured against his team or turned in impressive performances.
One story on Snyder's letter-writing habit called it "The Best Award in College Football."
"It made us go, you know what, this is the place for her if she chooses to go there," Justin Sullivan said. "Hopefully all of the coaches have the same morals, integrity and humility."
When Maguire Sullivan received her letter from Coach Snyder, she was a middle-schooler in Andale bouncing back from heart surgery and preparing for her first year of high school.
But the next few months unfolded like the kind of sports movie her letter-writer was so good at bringing to life.
Right around the time Sullivan could finally get serious about her college plans, K-State announced the school would launch a soccer program in 2015.
"Her Dad was grinning from ear-to-ear," Tomara Sullivan said. "Now, there was a possibility."
The Wildcats were set to begin play a few years before Maguire Sullivan would graduate high school. That meant committing to a program without a stadium.
"It was all just a vision," Justin Sullivan said.
But it was enough for Maguire Sullivan to consider K-State for the first time in her life. She started going to ID camps right after the Wildcats began to recruit players.
Early in her high school career at Bishop Carroll, one that would include four All-Metro selections and All-State honors in 2018, Sullivan caught the eye of Mike Dibbini.
And the next time she heard from a K-State head coach, it was to offer her a scholarship.
"She brings discipline and respect to the program," Dibbini said. "She's a steady and composed defender, and she bleeds purple."
Sullivan is now in her third season with the Wildcats, a junior defender on the most successful K-State team in the history of the program. And she's had a parent at every single match.
Her Dad has only missed one game, the team's 3-0 win over Oklahoma earlier this season, to watch her sister – the kicker for the Andale High School football team.
"Sometimes he surprises me like, 'Oh I can't come,' and then of course, he's there," she said. "I'm like, 'OK, I know by now Dad.' But it makes me feel a lot more comfortable."
And the letter from Coach Snyder?
It's back home in Andale, part of her family's impressive collection of K-State memorabilia.
"Not only is Bill Snyder a great coach, but he's an exceptional man," Justin Sullivan said. "What he does for the community, what he believes in and the young men that he raised on the field…He came up with his principles and we take those to heart."
The basement in the Sullivan house has everything from a Willie Wildcat whiskey decanter to a mannequin decked out head-to-toe in a K-State football uniform.
But there's a wall reserved for Maguire, with the K-State Soccer crest, a Wildcats scarf, a plaque honoring her as the program's Newcomer of the Year and a letter from a Hall of Fame football coach.
"When I got that letter, I didn't know I would be playing here at all or even be a student," she said. "To see that letter and be like, 'Now, I'm here,' it's really cool to see it come full circle."
"You're probably never going to play sports again."
Imagine a list of people who have gotten that news. Now take away everyone at the end of a long athletic career, the adults who have thought about life after sports.
Think of a kid hearing that, who never suffered an injury and didn't know anything was particularly wrong. Picture yourself in middle school, sitting in the emergency room and listening to the words "never going to play sports again," from someone you've never met.
"I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know the extent of what was wrong," Maguire Sullivan said. "It came out of nowhere."
She traveled around Kansas playing soccer on her club team and went out for volleyball as a libero - a position that requires you to basically throw yourself onto the floor and dive after every ball. She even played basketball and ran track.
For Maguire Sullivan, never playing sports again just wasn't going to work.
Sitting on the steps of Buser Family Park almost eight years later, the first commit from the third recruiting class in K-State Soccer history is surrounded by evidence this doctor was wrong.
But all the way back in middle school, someone else Sullivan had never met wrote her a letter.
And in purple ink with an unmistakable horizontal font, Bill Snyder got it absolutely right.
Sullivan grew up with a Will Spradling jersey, a Collin Klein jersey, a Rodney McGruder jersey and absolutely no plans to ever go to school at K-State.
"Her mind was made up," Tomara Sullivan said. "She was playing college soccer. So, we knew that we weren't going to have a Wildcat."
Back when their oldest daughter was tearing it up on the youth soccer fields outside of Wichita, two alums crossed Kansas State off Maguire Sullivan's college list. It wasn't for lack of trying.
Justin and Tomara Sullivan met at K-State and haven't missed many football or basketball games since then. The two-and-half-hour drive from Andale? Not a problem.
"We probably came up here once a month," Maguire Sullivan said. "Their favorite restaurant, well I guess our favorite restaurant, is Rock-A-Belly, so sometimes we would just drive up for lunch."
Legendary ham-and-cheese sandwiches were great but didn't change the college conversation.
To make matters worse, Sullivan also played plenty of sports that K-State did offer, between basketball, track and volleyball. But nothing could compete with college soccer.
Even though that dream meant that K-State was no longer a possibility, Sullivan was preparing to focus on her high school soccer career as she wrapped up the eighth grade.
And then she passed out.
It started happening during basketball games and track meets, but sometimes, Sullivan would be sitting in class when her heart would start racing, faster and faster.
She went to the hospital after a CrossFit workout with her soccer team. Her heart had started racing again, before Sullivan finally passed out.
Her Mom picked her up and it was off to the emergency room in Wichita. That was the first time she heard about Supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT.
"Her electrical system was messed up," Tomara Sullivan said. "And they had no clue why."
That was enough, for at least one ER doctor in Wichita, to tell Maguire that she was done playing sports.
"She was devastated," Tomara Sullivan said. "We were like, 'You have no business telling her this.' So, we went to a pediatric cardiologist and his information was to put her on medicine."
Justin Sullivan called this the beginning of the "Why me?" phase, as his oldest daughter worked through the pain of watching her favorite sports ripped away from her in middle school.
Not by an injury, but something as simple as her heartbeat.
The next stop for the Sullivan family was Kansas City.
Maguire was wearing a heart monitor and taking medication to stop her heart from racing, two things the doctors in Wichita had told her that she would need for the rest of her life. That would have made playing sports impossible.
Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City had another option to diagnose and correct the problem: exploratory heart surgery.
Even with a word like "exploratory" in front it, heart surgery is still heart surgery. But for Sullivan and her family, this was the second opinion they were hoping for.
"The doctor in Kansas City reassured her, 'You're going to be fine. You'll play sports again.' She was just ready to get it over with," Tomara Sullivan said.
The answer turned out to be something Sullivan was born with, an extra pathway in heart.
Surgeons froze this pathway to prevent her body's electrical currents from entering that part of Sullivan's heart. This kept her heartbeat steady without medicine or a pacemaker.
It also meant that Maguire Sullivan, the volleyball, basketball, track and soccer player was back. Almost.
"Getting back in shape was pretty difficult," she said. "Once I hit a peak, my heart would start to race again. They told me just to take it slow, that it would be fine. I had to get my heart back in shape because it had undergone a little bit of trauma."
Sullivan spent three months slowly building back her cardio. The opportunity to get back on a soccer field was the light at the end of the tunnel during a difficult rehab.
And then she got a letter.
A portion of the note, typed in purple font, reads:
God has brought you through difficult times before, and I know He is going to help you make it through this one too. Until he does, our prayers are with you. Your faith and trust will make things better each day. May the Lord bless you and be with you and yours in a very special way.
Written across the top, is a handwritten note:
Proud of you Maguire. Keep up the fight. You will win this battle. And thank you for being a great Wildcat fan.
Warm Regards,
Bill Snyder
"I didn't know it was coming," Sullivan said. "It just came in the mail and I remember feeling very happy and special. And I was inspired."
Snyder, then in his 23rd season as head coach of the Wildcats, has written similar notes to opposing players who have been injured against his team or turned in impressive performances.
One story on Snyder's letter-writing habit called it "The Best Award in College Football."
"It made us go, you know what, this is the place for her if she chooses to go there," Justin Sullivan said. "Hopefully all of the coaches have the same morals, integrity and humility."
When Maguire Sullivan received her letter from Coach Snyder, she was a middle-schooler in Andale bouncing back from heart surgery and preparing for her first year of high school.
But the next few months unfolded like the kind of sports movie her letter-writer was so good at bringing to life.
Right around the time Sullivan could finally get serious about her college plans, K-State announced the school would launch a soccer program in 2015.
"Her Dad was grinning from ear-to-ear," Tomara Sullivan said. "Now, there was a possibility."
The Wildcats were set to begin play a few years before Maguire Sullivan would graduate high school. That meant committing to a program without a stadium.
"It was all just a vision," Justin Sullivan said.
But it was enough for Maguire Sullivan to consider K-State for the first time in her life. She started going to ID camps right after the Wildcats began to recruit players.
Early in her high school career at Bishop Carroll, one that would include four All-Metro selections and All-State honors in 2018, Sullivan caught the eye of Mike Dibbini.
And the next time she heard from a K-State head coach, it was to offer her a scholarship.
"She brings discipline and respect to the program," Dibbini said. "She's a steady and composed defender, and she bleeds purple."
Sullivan is now in her third season with the Wildcats, a junior defender on the most successful K-State team in the history of the program. And she's had a parent at every single match.
Her Dad has only missed one game, the team's 3-0 win over Oklahoma earlier this season, to watch her sister – the kicker for the Andale High School football team.
"Sometimes he surprises me like, 'Oh I can't come,' and then of course, he's there," she said. "I'm like, 'OK, I know by now Dad.' But it makes me feel a lot more comfortable."
And the letter from Coach Snyder?
It's back home in Andale, part of her family's impressive collection of K-State memorabilia.
"Not only is Bill Snyder a great coach, but he's an exceptional man," Justin Sullivan said. "What he does for the community, what he believes in and the young men that he raised on the field…He came up with his principles and we take those to heart."
The basement in the Sullivan house has everything from a Willie Wildcat whiskey decanter to a mannequin decked out head-to-toe in a K-State football uniform.
But there's a wall reserved for Maguire, with the K-State Soccer crest, a Wildcats scarf, a plaque honoring her as the program's Newcomer of the Year and a letter from a Hall of Fame football coach.
"When I got that letter, I didn't know I would be playing here at all or even be a student," she said. "To see that letter and be like, 'Now, I'm here,' it's really cool to see it come full circle."
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