‘Are we serious?’ What this Rocky Mountain basketball starter overcame is ‘remarkable’
When Rocky Mountain boys basketball coach Ivory Miles Williams learned shooting guard Tanner Sweaney had been playing with a collapsed lung, he wasn’t as surprised as you might expect.
And neither were Sweaney’s teammates.
“He’s one tough kid, and he has a huge heart, too,” Miles Williams said.
It just turns out that his heart was in the wrong place — literally, not figuratively — in addition to having that other big medical problem.
Sweaney has a condition known as pectus excavatum, which causes the breastbone to develop abnormally and sink into the chest. He was born prematurely and spent the first eight weeks of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit with underdeveloped lungs.
“It’s hereditary, but there’s a lot that we kind of don’t know,” said Summer Sweaney, Tanner’s mother. “I believe I have it. I do have a concave chest, but back in the day, nobody knew anything about it, so it was just never taken care of.”
Since the fifth grade, Tanner has been monitored by Dr. Ellen Reynolds, a pediatric general and trauma surgeon at St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital in Boise. Tanner was seen twice a year to take measurements and X-rays to make sure the condition wasn’t affecting the function of his lungs or heart.
But things changed in 2023.
An ultrasound revealed that Tanner had a collapsed lung, and that the progression of his condition as he matured had caused his heart to be displaced. Surgery was scheduled immediately for July 6, 2023, to place two metal rods in his chest.
“They didn’t know how long it had been collapsed, but it was totally a black lung. It had black spots all over it,” Tanner said. “... I’ve been playing basketball my whole life with a collapsed lung. Wow, I was like, ‘Are we serious?’”
Added Summer: “Even when he was little, we couldn’t figure out why he was getting so winded running up and down the court. We just thought it was normal, or Tanner being lazy.”
That couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Tanner has been playing basketball as long as he can remember, regularly tagging along with his dad, Brian, who is a longtime football and basketball coach at Rocky Mountain. Tanner was so advanced that after a few years of Y-ball, he joined his older brother’s club basketball team as a first-grader playing against third-graders.
“What he’s done up to this point and what he’s had to play through and just accomplish in this short time is rather remarkable,” said Geoff Goss, Tanner’s coach with Idaho Elite. “I think there’s so many people who would use that as a crutch. But he’s one of the kids I’ve coached over the years that no matter what, it just didn’t come up, and he’d play through it.”
Tanner spent a week in the hospital after the surgery. His recovery took six months, and there was a significant period of time when he couldn’t even raise his arms above his shoulders. The bars are to remain in place for two years.
“I’ve had coaches all throughout my life be like, ‘Wow, you’re really good at offense, but where’s your defense?’” Tanner said. “I always thought I was out of shape. Then I find out I had a collapsed lung.
“After my recovery time and I started running with the team and I started getting in shape, I could tell I had way more stamina and I could run a lot more.”
Tanner, who is now a 6-foot-4 junior, is averaging 12 points, three rebounds, one steal and one assist per game this season. He has started every game for the Grizzlies.
“From seeing him his freshman year to now, it’s pretty cool to see his growth,” Miles Williams said. “He has a high ceiling of possibilities of how talented he could be. He’s really talented now, but he still doesn’t even know how good he could be.”
