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Claremont rugby star Martin-Feek stands tall, gains new love for sport following health scare

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If the events of the past year have taught rugby stand-out Logan Martin-Feek anything about himself, it’s that his love for the sport was strong enough to lift his heavy heart.

This past June, on orders from his pediatric cardiologist, Martin-Feek was told to hang up his cleats and undergo a battery of tests relating to the heart palpitations he had been experiencing over the previous 12 months.

The news hit harder than a bone-jarring tackle.

Were his symptoms related to a thickening of the heart muscle known as hydrotrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially life-threatening condition?

Or were they related to athlete’s heart, a condition more manageable but still requiring caution and attention, in which the heart becomes enlarged in a response to a heavy exercise regimen?

In order for doctors to determine the answer, the star fly-half with Victoria’s Claremont Secondary Spartans was ordered to de-condition, and that meant not only putting the brakes on his rugby career, but being left to wonder if he was ever going to get the chance to lace up his cleats again.

“I saw him the day after diagnosis and he was teary-eyed,” remembered Claremont head coach Phil Ohl. “It was devastating news.”

Thankfully for Martin-Feek the diagnosis was athlete’s heart, and if anything, that’s just what the 18-year-old showed throughout his recovery, ultimately discovering a new level of appreciation for the game after receiving full clearance to return this past fall.

“It’s not that I didn’t love rugby before,” said Martin-Feek earlier this week by phone, “but this year I have enjoyed it more than ever. I feel like I can give it my all, and if anything, it’s made me go even harder because you realize that you can’t play forever. As a 16-or-17-year-old kid, you don’t think about things that way. But this has given me the perspective to know that anything you love can be taken away from you.”

And with that experience comes a worldly warning to all athletes who may be experiencing the same symptoms he did.

“I know how much it sucks to go to the doctor, but you have to get your worries checked out,” Martin-Feek said. “Maybe it’s low blood sugar or nerves, but it can also be something very dangerous, so in the long run it just helps.”

Sitting at No. 10 in the latest B.C. Secondary Schools Rugby Union triple-A rankings, Martin-Feek and Co. hope to make a nice run at the provincial championships May 25-28 at Abbotsford and Ohl knows he has the kind of leader who is up for the task.

“He is a competitor and someone who is not scared to put the weight of the team on his shoulders,” the coach said. “He is a fantastic player, the best I have ever coached.”

And beyond that, an entirely new world will open to Martin-Feek, who has planned his own kind of overseas rugby odyssey for 2017, one which will re-connect him back with the family roots in New Zealand, where playing and watching the game is a way of life.

“My plan is to take a gap year and not go straight into university,” the 6-foot-1, 185-pound Martin-Feek explained. “My dad (Warren) is from Zealand, and my auntie Janine lives in Christchurch, so the plan in January would be travel there and play some club rugby. I am shooting for the (Canadian) national team, and hopefully time in New Zealand can help me increase my skill.”

He often times leans on a team of mentor-coaches including Ohl and Adam Kleeberger, the latter a former Canadian international standout. Their shared advice, he says, is both technical and inspirational.

And, of course, he has spent a lifetime celebrating his love of the sport with his dad, moments which Martin-Feek says encompass the entire breadth of his memory.

“With my dad being from New Zealand, I really didn’t have a choice,” the Velox club player said. “I’ve been watching the All-Blacks from age zero. There are all these pictures of me sitting on his lap watching. One memory is the 2007 World Cup. The All-Blacks lost in the quarterfinals and he was so shocked he broke out in tears. I remember that. It showed me how much pride you can have in sport.”

And that’s what Martin-Feek loves so much about the game, and why he is so glad to be playing it again.

“There is no sport where you play for 80 minutes, where you are trying to take someone’s head off, and then after, you grab your opposite number for 10 minutes, and you talk and you laugh together,” he said. “It’s maybe the best part of it all.”

And it’s in those moments that a heavy heart seems as light as a feather.



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