KENT, Ohio — When Georgia native CJ Harris transferred to Kent State University, he began his time as a Golden Flash with an experience he'll never forget.
Sitting in his biology class, Harris was in the front row when a classmate behind him began having an emergency.
"I just hear a girl in the back saying 'she's having a seizure' and I'm like, 'huh?' And I turned around and in the middle, she was sitting there, her head was cocked back and you could tell she was choking and nobody knew what to do," Harris recalled.
Nobody except him.
"I got up, picked her up out of the chair, laid her in the aisle and propped her head up on the book bag. Laid her on the side and then I had somebody take the time I had the professor call 911," he said.
Harris gave her friends a bracelet to give to her once she came to. It was one that he wore daily that read, "My seizures don't define me." Harris knew what to do at the moment because not only had he seen a seizure, he had them himself.
When Harris was in eighth grade, he was taking a quiz. The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital.
"I woke up in the hospital and my family told me that I had a seizure," he said.
Harris' grandfather has had seizures before. He knew what they were, but for him, there was a looming question. A natural athlete, Harris' first thought was how it would impact his ability to play.
"My head was like, 'How would this affect me sports-wise?" he thought. "If it was basketball, football, running track or even playing soccer, do I have to stop playing these because I'm diagnosed with epilepsy?"
Dr. Jonathan Zande, who specializes in Neurology-Epilepsy and Neurology, said that while there is a stigma that epilepsy would prevent a person from participating in sports, especially contact sports, that's not actually the case.
"Contact sports are really not any more dangerous to people with epilepsy than to the general population," Zande said. "As long as their seizures are under control and they're tolerating their medications, they can do just that."
Harris has found a routine that works for him. He knows when he's most prone to have a seizure, and his medication to control them is working well. Not defined by his seizures, Harris is following his dreams of playing football at the highest level.
"You don't have to stop what you're doing because you have a disability. I was just trying to show everybody you come out here, you can still play football, you can still play basketball.It doesn't matter what sport it is. Just because you have something holding you back doesn't mean it can stop you from getting where you want to go," Harris said.
Playing Division I football, Harris is well on his way to his goals. While Kent State will always be a home for Harris, he'll soon play at Louisiana Tech to be closer to his three-year-old daughter.
With dreams of playing in the NFL and increasing his platform for epilepsy awareness, Harris is holding his first-ever youth football camp, the Elevating Above Epilepsy Foundation Youth Football Camp, at Kent State Dix Stadium.
The camp is free for boys and girls ages 7-16 and runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with registration from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. The free tickets are available online here.
Harris hopes the camp will help raise awareness for the condition while also providing an outlet for local youth.
And his efforts are already being appreciated by others.
"Bringing light to the condition of having epilepsy, spreading awareness of not only the condition of epilepsy but what people with epilepsy can do," Zande said. "CJ's work is just really, really laudable."
