For more than 35 years, Clifford Kirk’s heart has belonged on the softball field.

Even this past spring, when his heart literally was the reason he shouldn’t have been there, Kirk was able to delay surgery as he tried to guide Soddy-Daisy back to the Class AAA state championship game.

Doctors had monitored his enlarged aorta for nearly a year before deciding this spring that immediate surgery would be the only solution. But the softball season had already started, and Kirk, ever the motivator, somehow convinced them that the procedure would have to wait a couple of months longer.

All the while, Kirk knew that if the left ventricle in his heart ruptured, he had less than a 50-50 chance of surviving.

“It was something I was aware of but not something I wanted to dwell on,” Kirk said. “It was a major deal, so I was certainly concerned.”

Despite having graduated eight starters from last year’s Class AAA state champions, the Lady Trojans returned to the Spring Fling but fell a day short of reaching the championship round and a shot at a third straight championship.

Two weeks later, in a three-hour procedure, surgeons placed a stent in the defective valve. Kirk progressed from intensive care to a private room at Memorial Hospital, but complications arose as his heart rate began to fluctuate. It went from too rapid a beat to slowing one day to the point that he fell unconscious.

“They called in a code blue. They had to hook me up to a breathing machine and put in a pacemaker,” Kirk related after being released Tuesday from the hospital. He is resting at home.

“I’m feeling a lot better,” Kirk said. “But once they’ve cracked you open like that, you’re pretty sore. I’ll just have to be smart, rest and take it easy for a while now.”

A former high school baseball player, Kirk got into coaching softball when his daughter Janet volunteered him to coach her summer-league team. More than 10 years later, having taken Middle Valley Hustlers teams to ASA national tournaments, Kirk made the transition from summer ball to coaching at Hixson High School and directed the Lady Wildcats to two state championships in three years before taking over the Soddy-Daisy program in 1990.

His Lady Trojans have become one of the area’s most successful sports programs, claiming six state titles and having more than 100 players sign college scholarships.

Ooltewah coach Norma Nelson, whose Lady Owls won the AAA state title this season, played summer league for Kirk for three years.

“Clifford taught me the game of softball,” she said. “I refer to him as the guru of softball, and I’d rather beat him than anybody in the world.”

Whether he’s jerking his hat off, tossing it on the ground and kicking it or giving a player a cold stare or a pat on the back, Kirk does not hide his feelings from the girls who play for him. And more often than not, he knows exactly which buttons to push to get the best from each.

The anticipation of each new season and the chance to continue working with teenagers has been Kirk’s fountain of youth and still serves as the best medicine and motivation in his recovery.

“It will take a little time to recover, but I’m looking forward to next year with so many girls coming back,” Kirk said. “And we’ve got some freshmen coming up that will help us too.

“I never thought it would become a career or that I would get so involved. But I still want to do this for a few more years.”

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