Two days before UCLA swim and dive was set to leave for last season’s Pac-12 tournament, Courtney Wilde was feeling ill.
“I knew something was wrong when I woke up but I couldn’t really put my finger on what it was,” said the senior captain. Chalking it up to dehydration, Wilde pushed herself to go to practice.
One lap in, Wilde was out of breath but still skeptical that anything was seriously wrong. A few more, and she saw stars. Coach Cyndi Gallagher and assistant coach Naya Higashijima urged her to get out of the pool, telling Wilde to listen to her body and that they didn’t want to risk anything this close to Pac-12 tournament.
“I’m just happy that I didn’t make her swim,” Gallagher said. “I could’ve killed her.”
Wilde underwent several tests after leaving practice and learned that she had blood clots in both lungs, with an especially large one residing in her right side.
“And that was it. Done, over. No Pac-12s,” Gallagher said.
Wilde was devastated. Her team, however, was steadfast.
Higashijima stayed with Wilde for nearly 24 hours in the emergency room. As soon as Wilde woke up the next morning, members of the team came to visit in shifts, bringing chocolates and flowers.
“I don’t think I could’ve gotten through it without them,” Wilde said.
Wilde’s parents were watching her sister swim in a conference at the Naval Academy and unable to get a flight back on such short notice.
Though Wilde’s father Patrick Wilde, a UCLA alumnus, wasn’t able to see her in the hospital, he instead reached out to doctors in the family who graduated from the UCLA medical school to better understand his daughter’s condition. Courtney Wilde’s cousin talked to those in charge of her treatment at the UCLA medical center to ensure that she was being taken care of.
“Without that, we would’ve been a mess,” Patrick Wilde said.
The connections that both Wildes have made through UCLA, as well as the bonds they share with their Bruin family members, have proven invaluable.
So it is little wonder that Patrick Wilde is now and was in his youth, a huge Bruin fan.
He often took Courtney Wilde to UCLA games when she was little, and although she said she didn’t know at that young age what it necessarily meant to be a student at UCLA, she did know that it was something that excited her. Patrick Wilde likes to joke that he brainwashed his children into loving the school as much as he does, and claims to truly have bled blue and gold.
It doesn’t seem like a claim to put past him. Gallagher recalls the Wilde family dynamic when she visited the family to recruit Courtney Wilde to UCLA.
“They made me dinner and everything was blue and gold. It was a really good dinner – a steak dinner,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher also called him “Mr. UCLA,” laughing about Wilde always being the guy who paints his face blue and gold at football games.
Patrick Wilde said that he and Courtney Wilde have motivated each other, he through instilling his own love for UCLA in her, and she through swimming career.
She said that her father truly taught her what it means to be a Bruin, and that his positive experiences at UCLA have shaped her into the optimistic person she is today.
Patrick Wilde commended his daughter’s passion and commitment to the sport.
“She’s been swimming since she was six, she never wandered,” he said. “I inspired her and she inspired me.”
With the blood clot behind her, Courtney Wilde is back in the pool looking to compete in the Pac-12s she couldn’t attend last season. Chances are she’ll have her dad in the stands watching, maybe even with his face painted blue and gold.