David Dent, West Virginia Swimming Assistant Coach Battling Cystic Fibrosis
David Dent was spiraling. The swim coach knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t pinpoint it, and it wouldn’t stop affecting him.
Eventually, the West Virginia assistant coach was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
“After landing my dream job coaching at a Division I school, I noticed something weird — my hands would wrinkle instantly in water,” Dent told the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. “Not just prune up a little, but full-on aquagenic wrinkling within seconds. I’d never really thought about it before, but it stuck with me. This isn’t normal. I started digging. Researching. Reading medical papers. And every trail led to the same place: cystic fibrosis. A few tests later, the diagnosis was official — I had cystic fibrosis. At 33 years old.”
It was both relieving and startling. But it started the healing process, both mentally and physically.
“It’s made me reflect on everything I accomplished before this diagnosis, both as an athlete and a coach, and just how much I’d been carrying without knowing it. I wasn’t just overcoming a tough background,” he said. “I was unknowingly training with a chronic genetic disease the entire time.”
And he was a great swimmer, an NCAA qualifier at Fairmont before turning to coaching.
“I was always thin. Always coughing,” Dent told the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. “I cleared my throat constantly after races, during workouts, even while I was coaching. I didn’t gain muscle or weight like the other sprinters. My recovery was always a little behind. But I brushed it off. I figured that was just my body.
“Then COVID-19 happened and everything got worse.”
Dent contracted the virus and things started spiraling.
“I kept getting sick, fatigued, and inflamed. My sinuses were a mess. I started having anxiety, or what I thought was anxiety — chest tightness, insomnia, and lightheadedness. I went from working out daily to barely doing anything. For over two years, I lived like that. Burned out, confused, and frustrated. Doctors told me it was stress and anxiety driving my sickness. They prescribed meds that didn’t help. I tried everything,” he said.
He was the head coach at Florida Tech and West Virginia Tech.
“At the time, I was the head swim coach at a Division II school. I built a powerhouse program and had one of the most successful tenures in school history. But my body was falling apart. I couldn’t keep up. I was exhausted all the time, getting sick constantly, and still had no real explanation for any of it. I kept pushing, but my health kept declining. I was stuck.”
Dent knows he isn’t the only one with a story like this, he wanted to share his experience.
“This journey isn’t about what I’ve lost. It’s about what I’m building now — a path forward for others like me who were told it was just in their head. Because it wasn’t,” he said. “And we’re not alone anymore.”
