Maddy Illig: A portrait of resilience

What does it mean to be resilient? Maddy Illig knows the answer.

In November, a routine heart checkup for Maddy threatened her health, season and confidence – putting the definition of resilience on full display for the Ronan Maiden faithful.

Maddy is a junior at Ronan High School and a standout athlete who started at times as sophomore on the basketball team. She’s been playing basketball for as long as she can remember, it’s simply a sport that she loves.

As the volleyball season came to an end last fall, Maddy was looking forward to returning to the basketball court, until a heart diagnosis threatened her entire junior campaign.

For Maddy, an annual heart exam was no surprise due to a preexisting condition, but the diagnosis of a coarctation of the aorta was. She always knew this was a possibility, but her doctors thought it would be far more likely to happen later in life.

So instead of starting her season practicing with her coaches and teammates, Maddy headed to Spokane for surgery. As surgery and an overnight stay in the hospital approached, she worried whether she “would ever be the same again.”

It was almost a month post operation before she was able to get back on the floor with her teammates to play and practice the sport she loves.

“It killed me, every second of it,” Maddy said of the forced time off.

For her coaches, the injury was “uncharted territory.” They needed to strike a balance between pushing, but not too hard.

Maddy’s father, Jason Illig, says that thanks to the medical professionals the physical concerns were minimal. The main worries were her mental and emotional state due to the “highs and lows” of the whole process.

For Maddy, it was a lot about the mental game of getting her confidence back. “I would have a bad game and it would kind of restart and I would have to build it back up,” she said.

Her mental game took a turn for the better when it came time to play in the Western Class A Divisional Tournament, held March 6-8 in Whitefish.

“I just realized how lucky I actually was to be able to come back and most people in those situations might have rolled over and called it quits, but I didn’t,” said Maddy with a calm defiance.

Despite her team falling short of a state tournament berth, Maddy found herself among the top contributors for the Maidens. She had come a long way from the athlete who wondered if she would ever be the same again.

But for Maddy one thing was for sure, “I’m gonna keep going no matter how many times I get pushed over.”

The easy route for Maddy through all of this might have been to throw in the towel, but she didn’t. “She wasn’t about poor me … she would say, ‘man I’m gassed, I’m tired, but I love it,’” said Maiden Coach Steve Woll.

It’s hard to know how something like this might affect a person. A comeback alone can derail both an athlete's physical and mental energy. However, it’s clear Maddy Illig is made of some tough stuff. In fact she’s already planning to get back in the gym this summer.

For Maddy, her message to her future self is simple: “Be a contributor, be strong."

“I want to be the captain of the team,” she added. “I want to be the leader of the team. I want to lift up my teammates and just help them – basically do exactly what they did for me.”