The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Purvis playing in Hartford with a heavy heart
HARTFORD >> Rodney Purvis looked as good as ever at the Greater Hartford Pro-Am on Sunday afternoon, seemingly a bit leaner, with a little more bounce in his step on the Sports and Medical Sciences Academy basketball floor.
But Purvis, the UConn guard, was playing with a heavy heart.
Just a few days earlier, Purvis’s close friend, Tyrek Coger, passed away after a workout at Oklahoma State University. Coger was 22.
Biologically, Purvis is an only child. But Coger, who was taken in by Purvis’s mother, Shanda McNair, when he was in eighth grade, was as close as Purvis has ever had to a sibling.
“He lived at my house,” Purvis said on Sunday, shortly before his Pauly Chute Slamm took on Cambyland in a GHPA game. “He was basically like my brother.”
Prior to the game, in a team huddle, Slamm coach Steve Sobel dedicated the game to Coger. Purvis then went out and poured in 35 points in the team’s victory.
“I couldn’t have asked anything more out of him today,” Sobel said afterwards.
According to reports, Coger was going through an outdoor stair-running workout in 100-degree heat at OSU’s Boone Pickens football stadium around 5 p.m on Thursday. He started feeling ill, and less than two hours later, was
pronounced dead at the Stillwater Medical Center. The Associated Press reported that the Oklahoma State Medical Examiner’s Office said Coger died from left ventricular hypertrophy — an enlarged heart.
The final medical report won’t be released for another eight weeks, however, Purvis pointed out. His mom is at Oklahoma State now collecting Coger’s personal items, and the funeral is expected to be on Saturday.
“It’s so crazy,” Purvis said. “We were just on a family cruise (a day cruise in Norfolk, Virginia) two weeks ago, before I came back to school. Ever since he’s been at school, we talked probably every day.”
Purvis and Coger met at an AAU tournament in 2008 and became fast friends. Coger soon moved into Purvis’s Raleigh, North Carolina home and was a teammate of his at Upper Room Christian Academy.