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‘I’m Glad to Be Alive’: How Walt Wells is Still Here, Loving Life and Football

The Eastern Kentucky coach recently returned to the sidelines after almost losing his life. He recounts it all, thanks to those who acted so quickly to save him.

The fridge in the entryway of Walt Wells’s campus office was empty. Thomas Bowling, Eastern Kentucky’s director of football operations, noticed it on his way out the door on a late August evening.

At the top of Bowling’s to-do list when he arrived the next day: get his boss some Powerade. The next morning, with the Colonels’ season opener against Eastern Michigan just five days away, Bowling waited for Wells to get to the team facility as other coaches dived knee-deep into the work of game-planning.