Sometimes a new door opens simply when you show up. Just ask Jaymar Parrish.
“I just came one day and was like ‘hey, it's going to be a while before I get a job again., I'd love to just come and help out,’” says Parrish of a conversation he had with Gateway football coach Don Holl. “He said he would love to have me.”
That's how Parrish became the newest assistant coach at his alma mater. The former Pitt tight end turning to his old friend football in a time of need.
“Being around football is home for me,” he says. “It's not strenuous, it's just fun. Nothing but good attitudes and great children out here.”
Parrish is just six months off a heart transplant, part of a journey that began in 2019.
“I was at a job and just didn't feel like myself,” he recalls. “So I went in. They told me I was doing pretty bad.”
He was in congestive heart failure. It was news that a 26-year-old, former Division I athlete never expects to hear.
“It's life altering, surprising,” he says. “You're still a kid, still think you can conquer the world, do anything you want on the daily. This kind of brings you back down, tells you that life is short.”
On the other side of an extended hospital stay, Parrish says he led a pretty normal life for another four years, until this past spring when those same symptoms he experienced that day in 2019 came creeping back.
“They said, ‘it's time to get a heart transplant,’” he says.
Recovery continues today.
“It was painful,” Parrish says. “You got to learn new things. Things that you normally do you have to change.”
But he's getting through it thanks to his family, community, and friends, including an old teammate who recently put heart health in the national spotlight.
Parrish and Damar Hamlin reunited at this year's Pitt spring game.
“We saw each other and was like 'man, I heard what happened,”' Parrish says. “I said 'you already know I know what happened with you.' So we just hugged it out and said good luck this season, love you.”
A new heart gave Parrish another chance. But he’s also living proof of the healing power of one’s passions.
“I spent a month in the hospital,” he recalls. “Those days are long and hard days, but coming back out here, being around kids; laughing, joking again, conversations with them, it brings you back to you being a kid, of you being in school.
“They see things one way, but you can show them another way to do something. Those are the good feelings that you feel again. Just being around kids again and having fun with football.”