This feature was posted on D3 Swimming Outsider on March 16.
Something's not right here
This story began on the morning of December 27, 2024. Emory's Crow Thorsen—the reigning Division III national champion in the men's 400 I.M.—was back home in Athens, GA, training with his former swim club, the Athens Bulldog Swim Club (ABSC), over winter break.
CT: It was morning, and I'm in the pool, and my first thought was, man, I really need more sleep. Something's not right here. No more going to bed at 2 a.m., staying up texting a girl.
Crow laughs now at the memory, amused that he initially blamed his sluggishness on the typical habits of a 22-year-old.
CT: We're on round number two of sprints. And I'm next to my brother. And I'm joking to myself—something's wrong because he's beating me.
His brother, McKee Thorsen, is also his teammate at Emory. Their younger sister, an NCAA swimmer at Davidson, was also in the pool that morning. Struggling to keep up with the set, and now finding it harder to breathe, Crow Thorsen climbed out of the water.
Crow, you can't die
CT: And there's my coach (Harvey Humphries, longtime UGA assistant coach, now head coach of ABSC). And I say, 'Harvey, I don't know what's wrong. My chest hurts. My breathing is weird. I just feel off.'
Then Crow threw up. Humphries told him to sit down and checked his pulse.
CT: I sit down in a chair, and my brother and my sister have realized something's going wrong. And so they both hop out...and as they come towards me I'm almost about to pass out.
Then these thoughts.
CT: At that point, I was thinking, 'wow, I'm going to die.' And I had a split-second thought of…'that really sucks.' And then I looked up, and I saw both of my siblings. And I thought, 'Crow, you can't die.'
A zebra
There is a common adage: When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Consider the most likely explanations first rather than jumping to exotic conclusions.
But, zebras do exist.
CT: The whole time, Harvey is on the phone with my parents saying, 'We need to get him to the emergency room. I think he's having a heart attack.'
For an elite NCAA swimmer with chest discomfort, shortness of breath, and nausea, the usual culprits would be dehydration, a panic attack, a rib stress-fracture, or too much pre-workout—not a heart attack. But Coach Humphries saw something others might have missed.
Many coaches know to look for cardiac emergencies, but they're usually watching for ventricular fibrillation (VFib)—a near-instant cardiac arrest where the heart quivers instead of pumping blood—not heart attacks. VFib victims don't clutch their chest or struggle to breathe—they collapse, pulseless, and need CPR and a defibrillator within minutes to survive.
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