From The Field To Faith
Drew was a linebacker who always told himself he'd get serious about God later. On September 23rd, later almost never came.
Drew will be the first to tell you who he was before. Not with pride — with honesty.
"I was very narcissistic. I was very full of myself. I didn't treat people the right way."
He grew up in church. His parents went, so he went. He sat in the pew, went through the motions, and walked back out into a life that didn't look much different than if he'd never been there at all. Faith was background noise — something he acknowledged existed but never let get too close.
"I used to always push off trying to grow my relationship with Christ," he said. "Oh, I'll give that up later."
Later. It's such an easy word. Comfortable. It keeps the door open without requiring you to walk through it. Drew had been leaning on later for years. He was a linebacker. He was confident. He was busy. God could wait.
Then came September 23rd.
Just a Normal Practice
There was nothing to suggest that day would be different from any other. Pads on, helmet buckled, running drills. Drew felt fine — right up until he didn't.
"I'm a linebacker, so we were doing inside drills, and I felt really, really lightheaded and uneasy."
What happened in the next few minutes, he mostly knows from other people. They told him he started throwing up. Then he went down. Just like that — one moment he was on the field, the next he wasn't.
His teammates got him inside and cooled him off. He was sent home. He couldn't eat. He figured he just needed to rest, so he went to lie down.
That's when things stopped being a story about a rough practice.
"It was when I got in my bed that I started uncontrollably shaking, crying, sweating."
His mom rushed in. She didn't know what she was looking at. His brother got him into the car and they drove to the hospital — fast.
The Longest Night
Drew spent the whole night there, and it was not a peaceful one.
He was in and out of consciousness. Still in his body, but barely feeling like it. When the doctors came in he couldn't hold a thought, couldn't form a sentence, couldn't control what his body was doing. The room came in fragments — voices, lights, faces — and then nothing, and then voices again.
"I could barely talk. I could barely make out words."
His mom never left. She and Drew have always had that kind of closeness — the kind that doesn't need explaining. And in that hospital room, she did the only thing she knew to do. She sang worship songs.
Every time she did, something in Drew settled. The shaking would slow. His breathing would even out. Then a doctor would come in, or a monitor would beep, or something would shift in the room, and the trembling would start all over again. In and out, all night long.
But there were moments in between — moments when the noise fell away and something else was present in that room. Something Drew didn't have a medical explanation for.
"When I was in consciousness, I really felt the presence of the Holy Spirit just in the room," he said. "It was scary — but I knew I was safe."
What the Doctor Said
The diagnosis was heat stroke. Serious, but treatable. Drew would recover.
And then the doctor told him the other part.
If his brother hadn't brought him in that night — if he had just gone home, gone to bed, and let sleep take over — he would likely have never woken up. The heat stroke had pushed his body toward kidney failure. Another few hours and it would have been too late.
The room got very quiet.
"That was the real moment," Drew said. "I've been living so sinfully, and I always kind of pushed it off."
All those laters. All those tomorrows he'd been counting on. All the times he'd told himself there was still plenty of time to get serious, to change, to lay it down and actually live for something bigger than himself — they all collapsed into a single, undeniable truth.
There is no later. There is only now.
"It really hit me: live for Christ now. It's not something to push off. Why not do it now? Why not lay it at his feet right now?"
The Person He Left Behind
Coming out the other side of that night meant reckoning with who he had been going into it.
"My past self would have made fun of myself now," he said, and there's a weight to that admission that's hard to miss. "It's kind of hard to think about that stuff, especially now that I'm living for Christ."
The guy who sleepwalked through church. The guy who was too full of himself to let anything in. The guy who kept God at arm's length because he figured he had time.
He doesn't hate that version of himself — but he doesn't miss him either.
"That's why Jesus came down for our sins. It's not about the past. It's how you're living in the present."
Something Real
As soon as Drew got plugged into Second Baptist Church, he felt something he hadn't been looking for — but immediately recognized as real.
"I really found my community. I really leaned on the guys around me and became friends with people I didn't even know before."
These weren't just teammates. These weren't just people who happened to show up in the same building on Sunday mornings. This was something different — a friendship built on shared faith, shared honesty, shared purpose.
"It was a real relationship. A Christ-centered relationship."
For a guy who had spent years keeping people at the same comfortable distance he kept God, that kind of community was new. And it changed him.
On Stage at Fall Riot
In October, just weeks after the night that almost ended his life, Drew stood up in front of a crowd at Fall Riot — a church event at Second Baptist — and told his story out loud for the first time.
Then, right there on stage, he was baptized.
The linebacker who had always planned to get serious about God later — who had nearly run out of laters entirely — stood in the water and made it public. Made it permanent. Made it real.
"At Fall Riot in October, I got to share my story in front of a bunch of people — and I actually got baptized on the stage after."
Still on Fire
He's still figuring out where exactly God is calling him. He'll tell you that honestly.
But what he won't do — what he can't do anymore — is wait.
"I'm definitely trying everything I can to stay bold in my faith and stay on fire."
The version of Drew who sat in church like it was a waiting room, who told himself later was good enough, who came within hours of never waking up on September 24th — that guy is gone.
What's left is a linebacker who knows, better than most, that tomorrow is not a promise. And that the only moment you're ever really guaranteed is the one you're standing in right now.