Former Husky basketball star returns to study nursing — grateful once again for scholarship support
Kayla Burt is making yet another amazing comeback — this time as a student in a rigorous UW nursing program.
Decked out in Husky purple scrubs, she spends two busy days a week doing clinical rotations at Seattle-area hospitals and three full days in class.
The former basketball player made her first and most famous comeback with a heart defibrillator that was implanted in her chest after her heart stopped for five minutes on New Year’s Eve 2002. Returning as co-captain two years later, she led the Huskies in scoring and assists. But her college basketball career ended her senior year after her defibrillator went off in the middle of a game.
Finishing out her full scholarship, Kayla earned her first bachelor’s degree in communications that same year and moved on, grateful for every game she played, every lesson she learned on and off the court.
“Being a student-athlete, you work with a group of people who have a common goal,” Kayla says. “You’re asked to step up in ways you didn’t think you were capable of. You have to be an effective communicator, a leader. You have to have discipline and mental toughness to succeed in athletics at the college level. All of those things are true of the best nurses, too.”
As a nursing student, Kayla is building on several years of experience working as an EMT.
“I’ll never forget the first time I did CPR,” she says. “I was looking at this lifeless person and I pictured that’s what I looked like when I had my cardiac arrest. It felt like it was coming full circle. My life was saved, and now I have the ability to render care to someone who needs it.”
Kayla’s on track to earn her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in August, with support from a Scott Greenwood Memorial Scholarship. The post-graduate scholarship, awarded annually to an outstanding Husky who excels in athletics, academics and community service, honors the memory of a former Husky football player who died of cancer at age 35.
In an impromptu acceptance speech at a Husky Athletics luncheon, she told the room full of loyal donors how grateful she was for their support — yet again.
“I won’t let you down,” she remembers saying. Who would ever doubt her?
