Putting his heart into the game
Sullivan returns to football after surgery
Facing open heart surgery and a life-threatening heart condition at the age of 15, Sullivan was told that he would never be able to play football again. Six months later, he was back on the field as a starting wide receiver at O'Fallon Township High School.
"When we were over in Germany, he had complained about his chest hurting and we took him to the doctor," said Dionte's father, Troy Sullivan, who was in the military at the time. "We took him to American doctors and German doctors and they ran tests and said it was gastric reflux. We thought, 'OK, it's heartburn, that's not a problem.'"But we got over here and he was in gym class last year and was running real hard and got light-headed and he fell out. We took him to the doctor again and ran an EKG and it came back fine. But we told the family doctor what had happened in Germany and said he didn't want to take any chances and referred Dionte to Cardinal Glennon (Children's Medical Center in St. Louis) to the cardiologist.
"Once they referred him out there, they ran a couple more tests and that's when they discovered he had a heart anomaly."
Based on what had happened in Germany, Dionte wasn't overly concerned about the incident in gym class.
"I was playing basketball and kind of got a chest pain, but I kind of lied about it and I wanted to go home," said Dionte, who will be a junior at OTHS this fall. "I made it look worse than it was. Then I went to the doctor and found out there was an actual problem."
"They did an echogram where they can see the heart itself and what the cardiologist saw didn't sit well with him, so he had Dionte go for an MRI," Troy said. "Once those tests came back, the doctor told me he didn't even want him walking up stairs.
"They wanted to take him into surgery almost immediately, but we had to put it off for a week or two so our family could get here."
On March 2, 2007, Dionte underwent open heart surgery to fix a congenital heart condition called "aberrant origin of the right coronary artery." His right coronary artery was coming out the left side of the aorta and had about an inch of itself embedded inside the wall of the aorta, which constricted blood flow through the vital artery. Cardiologists warned that without the surgery, he had a 59 percent chance of dying before the age of 18.
"He wasn't allowed to do anything before the surgery once they found out what was wrong," Troy said. "But they did the surgery and they fixed the problem."
"(The doctor) told me I couldn't play football anymore and that's what I've wanted to do all my life," Dionte said. "I thought I was going to die, too. I went home and broke my TV, flipped my mattress and I tore everything off the walls. I got mad for a while, then I got depressed and kind of stayed locked up in my room. But after the surgery, it was all good."
Even after a successful surgery, it seemed unlikely that Dionte would ever return to the football field. But he was determined to prove the doctors wrong. On Sept. 15, 2007, he was back in the huddle. Despite missing all of the offseason training and the first three games of the regular season, he finished the year with six touchdown catches and one interception for the OTHS junior varsity squad.
"After six months, the cardiologist ran some more tests on him and he said 'I don't like football, so I really don't want to approve him (to play), but I have no reason not to.' So he went ahead and signed off for him to go back out on the field," Troy said. "His first game back, he took over the starting wide receiver position and kept going. He's going to be the starting (varsity) wide receiver this year and could be the starting cornerback as well."
As soon as Dionte was cleared to resume physical activity after the surgery, he set his sights on a return to football.
"My wide receiver coach, JaRon Dent, has been like a mentor ever since he got here," Dionte said. "He got me back into football shape with some very rigorous activities and brought me up because I had lost a lot of weight. Before the surgery I was about 5-foot-7 and 145 pounds and after the surgery I had dropped to 120 pounds.
"After our workout was done and the season started, I measured in at 5-9 1/2 and 165. My 40 (-yard dash) time went from 4.9 to 4.4 and I've got a 31-inch vertical (jump). Everything I've got athletically for football, (Dent) got me to where I have to be."
Still, Dionte's rehab wasn't easy, physically or mentally.
"About a month after the surgery, I had a panic attack and I had to go back to the hospital," said Dionte, who also runs track and plays basketball. "(The doctor) thought for sure that he wasn't going to let me play anymore.
"My dad and my mom told me that you've got to have a backup plan and I hadn't really thought about one, so I had to think about other things. That was really hard because nothing else seemed interesting.
"Football has always been my No. 1 sport. I'd like to play football in college and after that, I'd like to take it to the next level."
Dionte is excited about O'Fallon's prospects for the 2008 season.
"We've established a more effective passing game," he said. "Me and the other starting receiver, Quan Guion, are pretty much equal in ability and we're getting the chemistry down with the quarterback. We have a harder schedule, but we'll try to take it to state. Quan is one of my closest friends, which is good. When he does well, I'm happy for him and I when I do well, he's happy for me. We make each other better athletes."
Support from teammates, friends and family played a key role in Dionte's recovery.
"While I was in surgery, two of the first people I met here, Tevin Johnson and his brother Brett, who are also on the football team, came to the hospital and showed their support," Dionte said. "I was stuck at the house for months and I didn't think I would see anybody, but people started showing up and I started getting phone calls. That made me feel and I felt like I could come back. That really gave me a boost."
"Dionte, Brett, Tevin and Quan are like quadruplets - they're real close friends," Troy said. "It works out on the field, too. He and Quan play the same position, but they've got a different specialty. Dionte likes to take the short-yardage, in the middle of coverage type of catches and Quan likes to do the down the sideline, deep-ball type of catches. Brett is a fullback and linebacker and Tevin is a safety and wide receiver."
In preparing for the upcoming season, Dionte continues to lift weights and train with Dent. The prominent scar down his chest is a reminder of his ordeal, but it's become a badge of honor and a source of inspiration.
"Coach Dent took me and some other players, who wanted to bring their skills to the next level, and we've been hitting summer camps hard and heavy," Dionte said. "We've been to NIU (Northern Illinois University), Greenville and Carbondale - wherever there's a camp, we're on it. We're getting some exposure and we're learning what it's like out there.
"I went to an underclassman combine and did everything you do at a normal NFL combine, only for (high school) freshmen and sophomores. I won the wide receiver MVP there.
"Me and my friend BJ Hendrix, who is a safety, both got invited to Dallas for the Elite 100 Camp, which is a spinoff (of the combine) for the whole Midwest. We got a chance to see how the boys in Texas play. It's a whole new ballgame down there, so we came back with a mind set of how we're in competition not just with people in our conference or in our state, but with people around the nation. We're trying to put O'Fallon on the map."
