After a terrifying on-field cardiac crisis, Angel City defender Savy King had one question after emergency open-heart surgery: “Will I ever play soccer again?”
Now, the 21-year-old USA youth international is back on the field, redefining what resilience looks like.
In 2025, she launched Savy King of Hearts, a non-profit focused on raising awareness about CPR, expanding access to health screenings, and empowering individuals to take action when needed.
In a new interview with Women’s Health, the pro athlete opens up about her cardiac health scare, the tough road back to soccer and how the near-death on-the-field incident forced her to decide how she wanted to live the rest of her life.
On what she remembers about her near-death on-the-field incident:
“We had just scored, and I started to feel a little bit dizzy. I took a deep breath, looked up into the crowd, and thought, Whoa, there are 20,000 people out there. I don’t feel okay. I’m in the middle of the field. There’s no way for me to hide. I remember laying down, I remember grabbing my calf to distract myself because I was not doing well at that point, and that’s it.”
On undergoing rigorous testing to figure out what caused her cardiac event:
“I’ve never had any prior medical issues or injuries or anything with my heart. I don’t drink caffeine, I don’t drink [alcohol]. So they were so confused about what was going on, because this isn’t something that happens to a healthy 20-year-old with no medical history.”
On the traumatic event:
“It happened at the right time with the right people, and I’m grateful, even though being in that public place also made it a lot scarier….I also feel a lot of pain knowing how much trauma it caused for other people. While I didn’t have any control over it, I still feel horrible that I caused so much fear.”
On slowly rebuilding heart muscle endurance post-surgery:
“Even just going out in public was scary, because I couldn’t move [too] fast or do anything strenuous. I wasn’t allowed to sweat. I wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things….It was definitely a process. I was the youngest one there [at cardiac rehab], but it was an amazing experience to go through recovery with other people, to hear their stories and to create relationships.”
On the need to still take things slowly once she was cleared to return to practice:
“It was a day-by-day, step-by-step process that, for me, was really frustrating. I constantly wanted to push to be back earlier, but this wasn’t the type of thing I could really push through.”
On finding it therapeutic to open up honestly about her recovery:
“For me, talking is a big thing. I need to talk about it. It helped get out my emotions, and I wanted to inspire other people to take this approach as well.”
On returning for the first game of the season in March 2026:
“I was nervous for about a week leading up to it, because this is the moment I’d been talking about for months.”
On what she thought as she took the field for that home opener:
“This thing that happened to me, I don’t want that to be what people associate with me—I want it to be about soccer and what I do on the field….It was just cool to feel like a player again.”
On choosing to face the traumatic event with grit and come out the other side as the strongest person she can be:
“There were a lot of things thrown my way during the past year, so it was all about how I responded to it….I knew that there was so much left for me in my career. Because little Savy would have wanted me to keep going, and that’s all that I was thinking about throughout this entire process. She wanted this so much, and I wasn’t going to roll over and let this be my defining moment.”
On having the gift of perspective:
“When you go through something like this, you realize every day is not promised. You never know what can happen at any point, and I don’t want to have any regrets. I want to do everything I’m passionate about.”
On knowing her purpose is bigger than the sport she loves:
“I want to be proud of the person that I am. There are little girls that look up to me as an inspiration, and the legacy I want to leave goes far beyond what I do on the field. I want it to be about the way I treated people, the way I approach situations, my nonprofit, and the impact it can leave.”
Plus, in an episode of the Women’s Health video series Strong Like:
On her first thought after undergoing open heart surgery:
“My first question was, when I actually knew what was going on, was, ‘Am I going to be able to play soccer?’ And as soon as I knew that I knew that, I was going to do everything in my power to continue to chase my dreams. There’s a lot of people that go through cardiac events, so if I can be an inspiration for those people to keep pushing, that’s the best thing that I think has come from all of this.”
On what she thinks strong looks like:
“I think being strong means showing up every day, being consistent, being hardworking, determined, persistent, just resilient through everything that you go through, I think that shows a lot of strength in who you are as a person.”
On trusting the process throughout her recovery:
“I would say it was definitely harder mentally, for sure. It was my first time going through a major injury, so it was my first time being outside of soccer for more than two weeks. For me it was a lot of patience that I had to learn, and just trusting the process and knowing that I was in the best hands possible. It wasn’t something like a knee injury, or some sort of leg injury that could just easily be figured out. We didn’t have all the answers to it. At the end of the day, I got to where I wanted to be and that was because I showed up, and I worked super hard to get there, and I trusted in the process.”
On her first day back with the team after her cardiac surgery:
“Our first day of preseason I was able to train back fully with the team, which was amazing. It was not something that I expected to happen as quickly as it did, but it was just an incredible feeling to be back and I’ve worked so hard for that moment, so it was really special.”
On the mindset that allows her to be her best self and athlete:
“A lot of what I’ve went through in my career as an athlete and every sport has really kind of shaped me into who I am today. And I think that, in general, you can either go one path or the other, you can take the approach of positivity and have a mindset that really allows you to be your best self when you’re going through something hard, or you can let it overcome you. I have this new perspective of not taking anything for granted, and every single day that I get to come play soccer and come to this facility it just an amazing day, and it’s really been why I’ve been able to play again less than a year after having open heart surgery.”
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