Cody O'Neill is a big, strapping young man used to mixing it up in the trenches as a football player and now as an assistant coach for South Dakota Mines. He's spent hours upon hours preparing for the next battle.
But nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to hear.
O'Neill's heart-pumping function, almost out of nowhere, suddenly was down to 25%, 20% and even just 15%. 
His battle was not out on the football field, but in life. He needed a new heart.
"I'm usually not a very emotional person," said O'Neill via telephone from Woodstock, Ill., where he recuperated from a heart transplant. "When they told me that I was going to have a heart transplant, I broke down and cried. It took me until they put me on the stretcher to take me to surgery to really buckle down and say, 'This is it. I'm going to be okay.'''
For the most part, O'Neill thought he was a healthy man. He was an offensive lineman at the University of South Dakota and had worked his way to Rapid City as the offensive line coach for the Hardrockers.
But one day in March, everything changed.
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