Alivia Henkel after winning the 400-meter hurdles at the 2026 NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships in La Crosse. Photo courtesy of North Central College.
Rochelle Township High School alum Alivia Henkel stood on the podium at the 2026 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships in La Crosse, Wisconsin, as a national champion. Two years earlier, after collapsing at school, the question she wrote on a hospital notepad was simpler: “Can I still play sports?”
At Rochelle, Henkel was a four-sport athlete — basketball, volleyball, track and field, and a year of golf. Basketball was her first love. Track began as a way to stay in shape, and she did not even enjoy it at first. She stuck with it anyway.
On February 1, 2024, while waiting for the first-period bell, Henkel went into cardiac arrest. Friends caught her as she collapsed. The school resource officer started CPR, and paramedics used an AED. She was treated at Loyola University Medical Center and placed on ECMO, a form of life support that temporarily does the work of the heart and lungs. When she woke three days later, one of the first things she wrote was whether she could still play sports. She became the first Loyola patient to receive a Medtronic EV-ICD, an internal defibrillator implanted a week after the arrest.
She chose North Central College, where she had a second cardiac arrest in October 2024 while studying in her dorm. This time her device delivered a shock and restored a normal rhythm. She missed the indoor season and returned in the spring. As a freshman she won the 2025 CCIW 400-meter hurdles in a personal best of 1:03.13. She is now a two-time CCIW champion in the event.
At the 2026 NCAA Championships she came in as the No. 7 seed, ran 59.99 in the semifinal, and won the title in 58.65. The time set North Central and CCIW records and was the fifth-fastest in Division III history. As she crossed the finish, she signed “I love you” in American Sign Language, a gesture she had promised her younger brother and one that had been shown to her throughout her recovery.
“If I ever get the chance to run again, I'm going to give it everything I have,” Henkel said.
Henkel is an applied chemistry major on the pre-med track and hopes to pursue cardiology. She has trained as an EMT, including ride-along hours with the same team that helped save her life, and she does service work with children in intensive care.
Story adapted from North Central College Athletics (Taiah Gallisath). Read the original feature →
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