Simon Keith, who conducted the ceremonial opening coin flip Saturday night before the Victoria Highlanders game at Royal Athletic Park, didn’t see it coming. He always figured in the 1980s that if he moved from the sports pages to the front page of the Times Colonist, it would be for scoring a goal for Canada in the World Cup or in a big professional soccer game.

Keith never could have imagined at age 21 that what would make him one of the biggest Island news stories of the 1980s was to be suddenly struck in career mid-stride by a heart virus that would have been fatal within weeks and necessitated a life-saving heart transplant.

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Keith went on to play in the U.S. collegiate NCAA with UNLV and then became the first athlete to play a pro sport after undergoing a heart transplant. He is back in Victoria for the taping of a segment about his life to be broadcast this fall on the ESPN weekly newsmagazine E:60.

The ESPN crew, headed by reporter Chris Connelly, is following Keith around his hometown and taped Saturday’s Highlanders coin flip and also will be on hand Tuesday night at RAP when Keith will throw out the season-opening first pitch before the Victoria HarbourCats first West Coast League baseball game.

“The ESPN crew is from Connecticut and they said to me: ‘Only an idiot would leave this city,’ ” chuckled Keith, who remained in Las Vegas after his UNLV days.

But it isn’t the natural beauty, but the sporting environment he grew up with in Victoria that greatly influenced Keith and which he is stressing in the E:60 report.

“The culture I grew up surrounded with in Victoria — the soccer and rugby World Cup players and Olympic rowers and basketball players from here — is what allowed me to dream big,” said Keith, now 49.

“It’s hard to explain to outsiders, but it's a real point of pride for me.”

The ESPN taping process has the memories rushing back.

“It’s been emotional, and kind of weird to go back to all the old places — my old neighbourhood, Mount Douglas [High school] and back here to Royal Athletic Park — with a camera pointed at your nose,” he said.

“Sometimes, this seems like this all happened to a third person.”

On the 25th anniversary of his transplant, Keith went to Wales to meet the parents of the person whose heart now beats in his chest. It was a young man, then 17, who ironically collapsed and died of an aneurysm on a soccer pitch.

The Islander has established the Simon Keith Foundation, which helps transplant patients and their families.

“I get 30 to 40 emails a week,” he said.

On the pitch, the next generation has begun with his 18-year-old son Sean Keith playing soccer this summer in the Victoria Highlanders Academy program.

Sean, who has committed to UNLV, has also been invited to pro trials in England.

cdheensaw@timescolonist.com