ARLINGTON ? Chase Sayles' great passion was basketball.
Just Monday, the 14-year-old returned from a summer basketball clinic through Duke University in North Carolina. Three days later, Sayles was dead.
The rising ninth grader in Arlington ISD collapsed while playing basketball with friends inside Barnett Junior High Thursday night. The practice was not for a school-affiliated team, according to Arlington ISD.
The Arlington fire department was called out to check on a person having chest pains. When first responders arrived, Sayles was unconscious. He died at the hospital.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office is looking into what caused his death, including whether a life-long heart condition played a role.
Sayles was born with a rare heart defect called transposition of the great arteries, which means the two main arteries leaving the heart are reversed, said Sayles' father, Ben Sayles.
It also means Sayles beat the odds to play sports.
His family shared a YouTube video with us, published by Cook Children's Medical Center in May 2014, which features Sayles and his doctor.
"At football, I play defensive end, tight end, and linebacker," Sayles said in the video. "At basketball, I play every position."
In the video, his doctor said children born with the defect used to have shorter life spans and couldn't play sports, until more-advanced surgery became available, beginning in the 1980s.
A surgery at Cook Children's as a newborn helped the Boles Junior High graduate live a mostly-normal life, his father said. Sayles showed no signs of illness or pain in the days leading up to his death.
"You can do anything that you want, it doesn't affect you in anyway, I won MVP for basketball," said Sayles, in the YouTube video.
His grieving family says the loving 14-year-old never let his heart defect get in the way of a sport close to his heart, and he will always be close to theirs.
An Arlington ISD spokesperson said counselors will be available at the start of the school year for anyone who needs to talk to them.
Sayles would've attended Martin High School in Arlington next year