It speaks to Sam Lamboi Jr.’s determination and positivity that the Horizon Science Academy senior described his final basketball season as “very exciting” despite being sidelined for the first two months following cardiac arrest and essentially serving as an extra coach in the interim.

“I’m trying to make everything count,” Lamboi said. “I’m definitely growing as a coach and as a leader. I’m a team captain. I was gone for a minute and the team was smarting, but we’re really coming together.”

While Lamboi is more concerned about the growth of his teammates with the postseason approaching, the Hawks regard their 6-foot-2 shooting guard almost with awe after he collapsed during a preseason workout Oct. 13. Lamboi was hospitalized until Thanksgiving week and still prioritized being around the team on a daily basis even though he didn’t play his first game until late January.

“He’s been our leader the whole year,” coach Robert Tate said. “Even when he couldn’t play, he was here at practice. We called him ‘coach Sam.’ He was still trying to fire the guys up.

“Even though he couldn’t play, he didn’t let that distract him.”

Lamboi was announced Feb. 7 as one of 10 national finalists for the Naismith High School Basketball Courage Award. The award, whose male and female winners will be announced March 6 by the Atlanta Tipoff Club, recognizes players who have “consistently gone above and beyond throughout the basketball season and … demonstrated courage in their approach to their team, school and community,” according to the organization.

The winners receive $2,000 from Jersey Mike’s, the sponsor of the award, and their programs get the same amount.

“It would mean everything to me,” Lamboi said. “What I’ve been through, people don’t know.”

For a while, Lamboi himself did not know.

“We were working out, I stopped to catch my breath and all I can remember after that is a blackout,” he said. “I just woke up in the hospital. I thought I got hurt. I didn’t know where I was.”

Teammate Kwadwo Mensah, a friend since middle school, filled in more details.

“We were playing five-on-five. It was kind of intense,” Mensah said. “He went down for a layup and got fouled but nobody called it. They got the rebound and came down the court and there was a foul there that wasn’t called, and we were arguing.

“It was just like another day, and then that happened. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.”

Tate and assistant coach Brad Palmer administered an automated external defibrillator until paramedics and Columbus police arrived. Tate said Lamboi temporarily had no pulse.

Lamboi said one of his pulmonary veins was misplaced, cutting off blood flow to an artery and causing cardiac arrest.

Surgery followed in early November. He now wears a pacemaker to help monitor his heart rate.

Lamboi returned Jan. 27 against KIPP Columbus, the team against which he scored a career-high 14 points in the first round of the Division III district tournament last year.

Three games later, on senior night Feb. 3 against Cristo Rey, Lamboi made three 3-pointers and finished with 13 points in an 83-42 win.

That was the kind of performance Tate envisioned after a junior season in which Lamboi occasionally started, averaging 5.8 points and 3.4 rebounds.

“We had big plans for Sam,” Tate said. “He was one of our top two or three players defensively, and he’s a team leader.”

Lamboi and his teammates aren’t done yet. Horizon Science (11-11) opens tournament play Tuesday with a first-round game at Cardington, which defeated the Hawks 67-62 in Lamboi’s second game back Jan. 29.

After high school, Lamboi plans to attend Capital or Ohio State to major in finance and real estate.

“I have just tried to get in my flow,” he said. “Being back, I felt brand new again.”

dpurpura@dispatch.com

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio high school senior named finalist for Naismith Courage Award