Volume 6, No. 17

ALIVE AND WELL Ress returns to the Aggies after a serious illness threatens his life By Rusty Burson

Perhaps the best indication of just how far Tomas Ress’ physical condition had deteriorated last year is that he still hasn’t found the courage to tell his mother.

"She doesn’t need to know," the 21-year-old Ress says thoughtfully. "Maybe some day, but not now. And she sure didn’t need to know back then."
Back then, even Ress didn’t know the life-threatening nature of his condition. In fact, there was a time when the Aggies’ versatile 7-foot forward didn’t even know what day it was.

Tomas Ress is still not completely healthy, but his presence in the Aggie lineup will be a big boost to Melvin Watkins' squad.

His fever was skyrocketing, while his weight was plummeting. The throbbing pain, which began in his stomach, was now circulating to all parts of his body. His lungs were functioning at just 50 percent of their capacity.

And the worst part, he says, was that nobody really knew what was wrong.

Doctors initially thought it was an appendicitis, so Ress underwent and emergency appendectomy. But that didn’t help, and the condition continued to worsen.

Ress says he would have been panicked. But at the time, he didn’t even have the strength to exert that much energy.

"After the appendectomy, when I went to the private room, my lungs dropped to 50 percent capacity," Ress said. "People often die when that happens. I spent three days in ICU, and on Wednesday they found out I had a staph infection and started giving me antibiotics.

"I went Monday through Wednesday without any antibiotics and had a 104 or 105-degree fever. I don’t even remember anything about Tuesday. I was so out of it. They were just giving me Tylenol, which didn’t really do anything. It was pretty bad and very scary."

It was certainly a relief to Ress and the rest of the Aggie basketball program when a proper diagnosis was finally made and a method of treatment was determined.

Unfortunately, even that did not signal the end to Ress’ physical woes and mental anguish.

Ress fought the staph infection in his blood for three weeks with antibiotics. He also had a catheter on his chest and received intravenous treatments for three weeks.

On the Monday basketball practice started last year, Ress was weighing about 230 pounds. But as he battled the staph in faction in early November, his weight dropped to 191.

He looked like a stick figure. But by late November last year, there was still considerable hope for a full recovery and a return to the court. In fact, he even managed to play in two games last season.

But just as he appeared to be getting better, the nightmare returned.

"I remember that the day after I took the catheter out I started practicing and the next day (Nov. 29, 2000) I played against (Morris Brown), and I actually scored," Ress said. "Then we went to Virginia Commonwealth (on Dec. 2), and I started having the stomach pains again.

"I actually went through finals with no sleep at all because I couldn’t lay down flat. Well, it turned out that I had a pubic bone infection. I had treated the blood, but not the bone. They couldn’t find out where the infection actually was, because the bladder lights up so much in X-rays and MRIs that they couldn’t see through it. So, I went back into the hospital for another five days right after finals. At that point I was like, ‘I give up.’"

At that point, the season was officially over for Ress. He began last year as the most impressive all-around player on the A&M roster in preseason drills. But by the end of December, he was just thankful to be alive.

Ress, who was granted a medical redshirt last season, still doesn’t know exactly how he obtained the staph infection. It could have been through the surgery he had on his foot the summer before last season. Or it could have been through the skin infections he had during his freshman season.

He’ll probably never know for certain. But what he does know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, is that he will never again take basketball – or life, for that matter – for granted.

He’s still not 100 percent back in terms of his strength, muscle mass and weight. But he’s back on the floor and again one of the primary reasons the Aggies enter the season with much higher expectations.

"Once I came out of the hospital, I realized how (fragile) life is," said Ress, who is back up to about 225 pounds. "I take things day by day from now on. I don’t focus on next year or next month or next week. It’s today, right now.

"I’m very, very excited about this season and what we can accomplish. Most of all, though, I’m happy to put last year behind me. It was a very difficult year for me. But I’m alive and well. That’s good. I’m very excited to be back on this team and back in action."

A&M head coach Melvin Watkins is equally excited about having Ress back. Of all the devastating injuries the Aggies have endured in recent years, losing Ress last season may have been the toughest blow.

As a true freshman in 1999-2000, Ress appeared in 25 games, starting in 12. He showed dramatic improvement as the season progressed and scored a career-high 22 points with a career-best eight rebounds in road game against Missouri. He was probably the biggest surprise of A&M’s talented freshman class that season.

And entering last year, Watkins anticipated a breakout season last year from the talented Italian. Health-permitting, perhaps that will happen this year, Watkins says.

"He’s still not 100 percent, especially in terms of his strength," Watkins said. "But we are surely a lot better with him than without him. What makes him so valuable is his versatility.

"He has played every position except the point, and if there is enough pressure, he has brought the ball up court. So, he’s almost played five different spots. And not only is he a good player, but he also brings a strong mentality and basketball IQ that we missed last year. He’s back on the floor and doing some things that don’t always show up on the stat sheet, but they are important things in the grand scheme of things."

Watkins says Ress’ versatility and size makes him one of the best NBA prospects on the Aggies’ roster. In fact, the Aggies’ fourth-year head coach says Ress may have the potential to play a similar role as Dallas Mavericks all-star candidate Dirk Nowitzki, a German-born 7-footer who has emerged as one of the NBA’s best players.

"As you look at the NBA game now, they are going to Europe to draft players," Watkins said. "I see Tomas being similar to some of those players they are bringing into the league. Tomas has three years of eligibility left, and if he gets serious about it and gets his body in tip-top shape, I would be surprised if he didn’t get a shot.

"We were talking to the Dallas staff about Dirk, and they were saying how he wasn’t tough enough early on and how he didn’t do this or that. But boy, look at him now. Can Tomas make those steps? Hopefully. Tomas should get motivated to say, ‘Hey, I can do this as well.’ I think he has that kind of potential."

Ress, who has been with the Italian National Team since 1995, appreciates the comparisons. But the sophomore also realizes just how much he must improve and develop to live up to those comparisons.

"I played against Dirk in ’96 or ’97 (in international play), and he kicked my butt," Ress said. "He’s good, very good. He’s matured a lot. He was a skinny player like me, but once he came to the United States he gained a lot of weight and his shot got so good. He’s just an amazing player now. I’d love to be like him.

"Coach Watkins tries to push me a lot and tries to make me feel good about myself. But I realize I am still a sophomore eligibility-wise and I am still far away from graduating. And I still have a lot of developing to do basketball-wise. I think it’s every basketball player’s dream to play in the NBA. But I need to add a lot of weight, gain the muscle back and just improve on my overall game before I can even think about that."

For now, Ress is thinking primarily about the season at hand… and thinking about how lucky he is to be part of it. The construction science major speaks four languages (Italian, English, Spanish and German), and if things go as planned this year, perhaps he will find a way to tell his mother just how bad things were for him last November.

"I told my father last summer when I went home, but I didn’t really think my mother needed to know how bad it was," Ress said. "Since my parents don’t speak English, the doctors spoke to one of my friends. And my friend was like, ‘I don’t think it’s going to do any good to tell his parents that he could die.’

"They were 5,000, 7,000 miles away. So, they couldn’t really do anything anyway. I told my dad this summer and he was kind of surprised. But it’s just better that my mother doesn’t know how bad it was yet. Maybe after I’m healthy for a full season she can handle it. But if I told her now she would just worry and want me to come home. I don’t want to go home or even address that, because I’ve got a lot of things I want to do at Texas A&M right now."

That’s good news for Aggie basketball fans, who can be "Ress assured" that that the versatile forward is back and on his way to being better than ever.

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