After it nearly took his life, this is what the sport of lacrosse has taught Penn midfielder Sam Handley

The bus ride home on February 15, 2020, from College Park, Md., was unbearable.

Something wasn’t right and Sam Handley could feel it. Color had drained from his face.

An underlying chill had seized his body. The hulking 6-foot-5, 230-pound Penn All-American midfielder was dying slowly right there on the Quakers’ team bus. His insides were a churning red river. Only Handley didn’t know it. No one knew it. And Handley wasn’t about to say anything about it. He thought he had broken ribs. He’d suck it up.

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Sometime during the second half in the Quakers’ 2020 season-opening 17-15 loss to national powerhouse Maryland, Handley took a big hit to his upper left abdomen. He took himself out of the game — then went back in, during a contest in which he scored three goals and had two assists.

It was not until later that night, after bleeding internally for over six hours, during dinner with his father and brother at a restaurant formerly called the Tap House on Penn’s campus, that something serious was wrong.

“If I had waited another 30 minutes to an hour, I would not be here today,” Handley, 23, recalls. “I had been bleeding out for six-and-a-half hours after that game.”

Sam’s spleen had exploded into pieces.

Dr. Brian Smith of Penn Presbyterian Hospital saved Handley’s life.

Today, the three-time All-America recipient, and one of the nation’s best players bears a 12-inch-long vertical scar that resembles an old TV antenna down the middle of his stomach. It reminds him of his harrowing day when he had to undergo emergency surgery to remove a ruptured spleen.

The ordeal changed his life.

“It’s changed me mentally, realizing that I’m lucky to be alive,” said Handley, whose 2020 and 2021 seasons were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “I found out how fortunate I am to have the support system of my family, my friends, my teammates, and the Penn community. No one person ever told me how serious it was. They told me I would be opened up and they would see me on the other side. Long-term wise, I didn’t look at it as that serious.”

That serious?

Handley, who’s from Portland, Oregon, had to relearn how to walk. He spent 10 days in the hospital after surgery. In that time, he lost 20 pounds. When undergoing the type of surgery Handley had, other internal organs tend to shut down. His intestines stopped working for a couple of days. Everything he tried absorbing came right back up. His rehab took two-and-a-half months.

Last year was his comeback season, when he led the Quakers with 73 points, scoring 36 goals and handing out 37 assists, despite the opposition’s double — and sometimes triple — teaming him. He’s merited that attention. Handley, maybe because of his size, takes more punishment and pounding when he has the ball than possibly any one player in the nation. Think of a lacrosse version of Sixers star Joel Embiid, on the thin pantheon of athletes that possess that fine blend of athleticism, size, speed and skill and you would have Handley.

“Sam’s pretty special,” said Penn coach Mike Murphy, now in his 14th season. “Sam is clearly the most talented player we’ve ever had here. Before Penn, I was an assistant coach at Brown and at Virginia and coached two guys that won National Player of the Year: Darren Lowe in 1992 at Brown, and Doug Knight in 1996 at Virginia; Sam has every bit of talent as those guys did.”

“Whether Sam will have the same career remains to be seen yet, but Sam is bigger, more athletic, he’s two-handed, and is a more complete player than those guys. We are in a different era of lacrosse, and we’re looking at bigger, stronger athletes playing the game today. To think about the adversity Sam had to deal with because of the injury, then to deal with having consecutive seasons taken away from him due to COVID is remarkable.”

J.B. Handley, Sam’s father, knew something was wrong as soon as he saw Sam emerge from the Maryland locker room after that 2020 season opener. Sam was the last one out of the locker room. J.B. was there with his son, Jamie, Sam’s brother who has Autism, and Sam’s grandfather, Brad Handley, a former Green Beret medic and covert CIA operative who is 6-foot-2, and at 82 still very physically daunting. Sam was walking hunched over and told his dad everything was okay.

But during the bus ride home, Sam called J.B. about five times telling him he didn’t feel well. After arriving back at Penn, the Handleys met at the Tap House. Sam had not eaten since 9 that morning. Sam gulped down a pizza and quickly vomited the food out. That’s when Sam told his father to take him to the hospital.

The ER was packed. Sam’s vitals were taken. Sam was told he would be next. That was not a good sign. Sam’s blood pressure was catastrophically low. An MRI was taken and the Handleys were told Sam had to be transferred immediately to Penn’s trauma unit at Penn Presbyterian Hospital. As soon as the ambulance pulled in, Sam was whisked into emergency surgery.

J.B. called Sam’s teammates, BJ Farrare and Piper Bond, and nearly the entire Penn lacrosse team arrived at Penn Presbyterian to support the family. Farrare and Bond took Jamie with them, while J.B. called Sam’s mother, Lisa, back home in Oregon, to let her know what was happening.

“It was the worst 90 minutes of my life,” J.B. said. “I was by myself and remember Dr. Smith busting through the doors yelling to me, ‘Sam’s fine, he’s doing great!’ I remember bursting into tears. This was my firstborn lying there. He never would have made it through the night. He was nearing a flatline in the ER. Thank God for Dr. Smith and that staff.”

“After I went through surgery, I didn’t appreciate how severe things were, I was pretty drugged up,” Sam recalled. “My father took a lot of anxiety and the brunt of it all, but rock bottom came after the surgery when the meds wore off. I couldn’t eat anything. I would say my grandfather walking with me, holding me up as I [went to the bathroom] was rock bottom. My grandfather is an absolute [expletive] at 82. He’s been an important part of my life. To be playing again and knowing he’s watching has been a big gift I could give him.

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“My family didn’t flinch when my brother was diagnosed with Autism, and I wasn’t going to flinch when this happened to me. When you go into college, you’re an idiot freshman. You learn hard times make better men. I could say I looked down death — and I feel okay with my shirt off (laughs).”

The NCAA lacrosse Final Four will be held in Philadelphia at Lincoln Financial Field on Memorial Day weekend on May 27th and 29th. After the Quakers’ 15-9 victory at Harvard on Saturday, Penn is 5-5 overall and 3-3 in the Ivy League — with Handley directly responsible for winning two of those games with sudden-death overtime goals. Ranked No. 10, the Quakers are a Top 25 program, but they will need to have a strong Ivy League tournament to make the NCAA Tournament. Handley has 92 career goals and is eight away from the magical 100 with three regular-season games to play

Sam could become one of Penn’s rare four-time All-Americans. He will one day be inducted into the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame. But Sam doesn’t really care about any of that right now.

His only current goal is to go out as a national champion wearing Quakers red, white and blue.

As for everyone around him, the memory of that day in February 2020 will never go away.

“I think about what happened to Sam at least a few times a day,” his father admitted. “It was that close. We learned with Sam, as others should be aware, any injury in the upper left abdomen, go right to the hospital. Don’t wait. It’s the one message I can’t stress enough. When I watch Sam play, it works its way through my head. I feel gratitude every time I see him. It puts lacrosse in perspective. I don’t care if he ever plays another game. As his father, I’m immensely proud of him. He is an inspiration. He faced extreme adversity and extreme adversity, it reveals character. What happened to Sam has matured him much faster than if he had not gone through it. His balance and wisdom after that event have made him a better person.”