ANOTHER BLOW FOR THE SOUTH CAROLINA AS THEIR COACH INVOLVES IN......

Dawn Staley is a workout fiend. Long after her Hall of Fame basketball playing career ended, the 48-year-old coach of the University of South Carolina’s women’s team often exercises right along with her players, lifting weights, walking miles at a time and jumping rope to stay fit.

That level of cardiac activity is good for the heart – unless, like Dawn, you suffer from pericarditis, which is a painful inflammation of the thin, fluid-filled sac that covers the outer surface of the heart.

“After experiencing pericarditis for 2 ½ years now, I know a lot of times it flares up because of my job and stress levels and how active I am,” says Dawn, who coached the Gamecocks to the 2017 NCAA women’s national championship while silently battling her heart condition. “You have to rest for it to get better, but I’m not used to resting.”

Dawn first experienced the pain of pericarditis in Rio de Janeiro while serving as assistant coach of Team USA during the 2016 Summer Olympics (she is now the national team’s head coach). While she helped bring home the gold medal, she also brought home – her Cleveland Clinic doctor believes – a virus that likely caused her medical condition.