‘Everything went black.’ After scary seizure, EKU baseball’s Will Brian is thriving.

Pretty much every day of the 2022 college baseball season, Eastern Kentucky closer Will Brian has checked the NCAA’s national statistics website.

On many of those days, Brian has seen his name listed as the Division I leader in saves.

“I do check the stats every day,” Brian says. “I just like seeing how much I have improved from last year to this year.”

To put his name among the national leaders in saves, Brian has overcome one tribulation after another.

In his first three seasons at EKU after graduating from Meade County High School, the left-handed Brian made only 24 combined game appearances.

The reason was a nerve malady near his throwing elbow that required surgery and was so severe that doctors at one point implored him to give up baseball.

Brian refused to quit, instead sitting out the 2020 season — which was prematurely ended by the COVID-19 pandemic, anyway — to rest his arm.

He also adopted a series of stretching exercises lifted from workout videos posted on YouTube by ex-Cincinnati Reds and current Los Angeles Angels pitcher Michael Lorenzen to rebuild his left arm.

It worked so well that Brian came back from a year’s inactivity throwing harder than he ever had while establishing himself as the EKU closer by saving 10 games.

Entering the current school year, the 5-foot-11, 220-pound redshirt junior felt that he had so triumphed over his history of arm woes that he had a realistic chance to fulfill his life-long goal of being chosen in the Major League Baseball Draft.

Instead, the events of Nov. 19, 2021, frightening and still unexplained, could have changed everything for Brian.

‘I was on the floor’

On Nov. 19, Eastern’s players were receiving their new baseball gloves for the season. Brian was in the EKU baseball locker room with fellow Colonels pitcher Niko Leontarakis comparing their new leather.

“The next thing I remember, I was on the floor and there were people standing over me,” Brian says.

What happened in between those points is seared into the memory of Leontarakis.

Inexplicably, Brian started twirling around the EKU locker room. Leontarakis thought it was a joke — until Brian slammed hard into a locker.

He then started to fall to the floor.

“I ran over to catch his head and make sure his head didn’t bounce off the ground,” Leontarakis says. “He was seizing, his whole body, out of control. I’m holding his head with one hand and I’m holding his hand with the other. I look up and I’m like ‘Someone’s got to call 9-1-1.’”

Eastern head coach Chris Prothro answered the calls for help from Leontarakis. “It was pretty scary,” Prothro says. “It was a wild thing to see.”

Once the paramedics arrived, Brian “was just gaining consciousness,” Leontarakis says. “When he gets on the stretcher they are asking him questions — ‘What is your birthday?’ Will just kept asking to speak to his wife.”

Soon, Brian blacked out again.

When he awoke next, he was in a hospital bed and his newlywed wife, the former Woodford County High School distance runner Makenzie Thomas, was sitting by his side.

According to the John Hopkins Medicine website, “anything that interrupts the normal connections between nerve cells in the brain can cause a seizure.”

Everyone was perplexed by what had happened to Brian. “First seizure I ever had in my life,” he says. “First seizure in my family.”

To this day, Brian says, doctors are unsure what caused him to seize. “They ran all these tests, they said I had minor activity in my brain that would show for seizure,” he says. “But they don’t know what caused it.”

Doctors also told him, Brian says, there was a good chance he would have another seizure within six months. For that reason, Brian was put on restrictions that prevented him from driving or cooking or even showering if alone.

“For the first month (after the seizure), it was very hard for me to remember stuff,” Brian says. “I could barely talk. I stuttered a lot. Making eye contact (with others) was very hard. I looked at the floor. (The doctors) said making eye contact would be one of the hardest parts because (the seizure) impacted the left side of my brain.”

Yet around Christmas, Brian says “that everything cleared up for me. I started feeling pretty much normal. A great present for me.”

‘A super power?’

Once the lingering effects from the seizure receded, Brian set his sights on returning to the mound.

“When I came back from my seizure, my velo(city) was up. I was consistently sitting 92 to 94 (mph),” he says. “Coach Pro joked maybe (the seizure) gave me a super power.”

In 25 appearances out of the Eastern Kentucky bullpen so far this season, Brian has won twice (2-0 with a 1.89 ERA) and converted 14 saves — which leads NCAA Division I through last weekend’s games. Opponents are hitting .094 against him.

Brian has been especially effective against in-state competition. Of his 14 saves, five — two against Bellarmine, one each vs. Kentucky, Morehead State and Western Kentucky — have come against other teams from the commonwealth.

The four-out save Brian recorded in EKU’s 6-3 win over UK on March 29 was especially meaningful. In 2021, Kentucky shortstop Ryan Ritter laced a two-run double to right field off of Brian in the eighth inning to give the Wildcats a 7-6 win over the Colonels.

This year, Brian stuck out Ritter for the final out to clinch a victory over the Cats.

“That definitely made me feel good about myself,” Brian says. “I got him back — and Ryan Ritter is a great ballplayer.”

Going into Tuesday night’s game at No. 6 Louisville (35-15-1), EKU (33-17) has compiled its most wins in a season since 2004 (34 victories).

Contrary to predictions, Brian has made it almost six months without having another seizure. His restrictions on driving, cooking, etc., while alone have been lifted.

Not knowing what caused his seizure “is scary. It really is,” Brian says. “But I try not to worry. I think dwelling on stuff causes more issues than just letting it go.”

One question EKU baseball has not had to ponder this season is whether the Colonels closer can bounce back after adversity.

“It has not been an easy road for him,” Prothro says of Brian. “And I haven’t seen every player in the country. But (Brian’s) got to be up there with any (closer) out there.”