How former USC football player Maxwell Iyama found peace after medical retirement
When Maxwell Iyama walks across the stage at Colonial Life Arena on Friday, officially graduating from South Carolina, he’s going to feel a lot of ways.
Nostalgic, because he’s leaving such a formative place.
Nervous, because the real world is right around the corner.
But above else, the former South Carolina football offensive lineman is going to feel proud. Proud of his work. Proud of his journey. Proud of himself.
“Everybody has a different story,” Iyama said Thursday during a ring ceremony and photo shoot at Williams-Brice Stadium for USC athletes.
And what a story he’s written.
Iyama’s life changed forever in 2019 when, as a second-year offensive lineman under former coach Will Muschamp, he was medically disqualified from football. The sport had been a dream and a passion for as long as he could remember, dating back to his childhood in Tennessee.
That’s what got him to USC initially. He was a nationally ranked recruit, someone who picked the Gamecocks over prominent suitors including Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee.
A year later, it was gone. Iyama redshirted his 2018 freshman season without playing in a game before suffering multiple “seizure-like episodes,” he said. Although he suspects a past history of concussions played a role, he still has no idea what specifically caused them.
That medical condition forced Iyama to miss South Carolina’s full 2019 spring practice schedule. Not long after, he sat down with head athletic trainer Clint Haggard, who broke the news: He couldn’t safely play football anymore, and he had to medically retire.
“I almost didn’t want to believe it, you know?” Iyama said. “I started pinching myself. I thought it was a dream.”
From the start, South Carolina’s football program and athletic department ensured Iyama they’d honor his scholarship. But for a while, he said, focusing on the opportunity ahead wasn’t easy.
For the 23-year-old offensive lineman, losing football was “a battle in itself” — something he speaks openly about but readily admits he’s still mentally recovering from.
“The biggest challenge was really my mental state,” Iyama said. “That’s basically the only battle that I had to fight: fighting depression, not being able to play no more, fighting laziness. … Once you get done with football, you feel like there’s nothing to prove to nobody anymore.”
Dreams still possible
As he pursued a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems at USC, Iyama said Haggard, the football trainer, was instrumental in encouraging him to see a therapist. Members of South Carolina’s athletic department were also crucial in his mental health journey.
Over time, Iyama said, seeing a therapist and devoting time and resources to his mental health helped him accept a new way to think about his medical disqualification. Yes, football was something he loved and valued. But it wasn’t the only thing he loved and valued.
“There’s always another way to get what you want in life,” Iyama said. “Even before football, I’ve always wanted to have a family. And financial stability. And just happiness overall. That’s still possible, and realizing that was still possible is what’s helped me along the way.”
Iyama still appreciates football as a sport and finds himself watching the occasional game. He still talks with former South Carolina teammates including Jovaughn Gwyn, Kingsley Enagbare, Zacch Pickens and R.J. Roderick. His relationship with Muschamp, his former coach, is strong.
But Iyama saw the 2020 season, when Muschamp was fired and Shane Beamer was hired, as a natural time for him to distance himself from the program. That all went down amid the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, too, which made the transition even simpler.
“I haven’t even shaken Beamer’s hand, but I know he’s a great guy,” Iyama said. “My teammates here speak highly of him. … But I’d say the transition was more like a step away. And I think it was beneficial to me because it kind of made me grow up a little bit more. I wasn’t really relying on many coaches to pull strings and do this and that — it was my responsibility.”
He’s shouldered that responsibility and thrived by tapping into one of his earliest loves: technology. Iyama has been interested in tech and computers dating back to the days when he’d troubleshoot — and often fix — software and hardware issues with his Xbox gaming console as a kid.
“Mama wasn’t gonna buy me another one,” he said with a laugh.
One silver lining of his journey: giving up football has allowed him to pour countless hours into his major and related extracurricular activities in a way that just wasn’t realistic as an athlete.
He’s currently studying for a cybersecurity certification through the nonprofit (ISC)². He practices the art of ethical hacking, which helps IT experts identify security they can solve before hackers exploit them. He spent the majority of his spring break at home building a personal computer, or PC, from scratch.
“My first PC ever,” he said. “I’m proud of that.”
That’ll continue postgrad. Iyama, who plans to stay in the Columbia area initially after graduating, is actively pursuing careers in cybersecurity, scouring job boards for opportunities and making connections via LinkedIn. He happily refers to it as career “grind mode.”
And as he formally moves on from one chapter to the next Friday, he’s thankful for those who stood with him as his story — a different story — got written.
“The staff and the school have always been behind me, even whenever I was struggling,” Iyama said. “They always supported me, whenever I didn’t feel like talking. If I felt like giving up, they’ve always picked me back up. I owe this university to the most, I owe this department the most and I really appreciate everything they’ve done for me.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
