"A Dream Come True" Kentucky fan describes special meeting with Davion Mintz

MrsTylerKSR

On3 image — Photo courtesy of Makenna Lunsford

Sometimes things just happen for a reason. After Kentucky’s win at Kansas on Saturday, 16-year-old Cats fan Makenna Lunsford wanted to meet the team, specifically her favorite player Davion Mintz, so she took a chance. Sporting her Immanuel Quickly jersey, Lunsford made the long trek down from the rafters at Allen Fieldhouse after the final horn sounded.

“We were sitting really high up so I went to the bottom of the court and I flexed like Oscar [Tshiebwe] does and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m probably not going to be able to see any of the players,” she told KSR this morning.

After spotting Keion Brooks in the tunnel, Lunsford went for it.

“I saw Brooks first and I was like, ‘I’ve gotta go.’ I ran pretty much to where he was and took a picture and I saw everyone by the locker room. I thought, I’m not going to be able to see anyone because of COVID. There’s no way they’re going to be able to come out with all these Kansans.”

“Hey, she is crying over you”

As the crowd of Kentucky fans swelled outside of the locker room, Lunsford spotted Mintz, who didn’t score in the 80-62 blowout and was in a bit of a shooting slump, going 4-19 from the floor over the last three games.

“I was really nervous to go see him because I could just tell it felt like he took it kind of hard,” Lunsford said. “I said, ‘Can we please take a picture?’ and we took a picture and he pulled me to the side and we just kind of had our own conversation.”

That conversation touched Mintz so much that he told reporters about it last night following Kentucky’s win over Vanderbilt. In the 77-70 victory, Mintz broke out of his slump, tying a career-high with 21 points, including four threes. He said Lunsford was his inspiration.

“I was walking out of the locker room and there was this little girl, she was probably a young teenager and she’s crying her eyes out as she’s walking up to me. I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ She was like, ‘I’m just so excited to meet you. This is my first time and you’re my favorite player. I’ve been waiting a year.’ And I had zero points. I didn’t really even play a full half of a game, you know what I mean?”

“I said, ‘I just look up to you,'” Lunsford said. “‘You’re honestly such a fighter and it’s so amazing seeing that.’ I started crying, as he said, and he just kept hugging me and saying, ‘Thank you so much.'”

Still overcome with emotion, Lunsford turned around so Mintz and the others couldn’t see her cry. Mintz’s father noticed.

“He was like, ‘She is really crying over him,'” Makenna’s mother Wendy said. “And I said, ‘Yeah. Legit, she loves him and loves his spirit and his fight’ and his dad kind of got a little emotional. She was still kind of turned around, pulling herself together and his dad grabbed him and said, ‘Hey, she is crying over you.’ And he said, ‘I’ve never seen anyone cry over you.'”

“Honestly, it was breathtaking,” Lunsford said. “I just looked up at him and was like, ‘I love you so much.’ And I walked away and he just came over again and he said, ‘This means so much to me. Thank you so, so much.’ And he just gave me another hug.”

For both Lunsford and Mintz, this was about more than just basketball.

“I see him in me and I see a piece of me, honestly, in him.”

Lunsford plays soccer. In 2020, she tore both labrums in her hips and had to have them surgically repaired and her hip flexors released. She’s been slowly working her way back to the field but is still in a great deal of pain, both physically and, sometimes, emotionally. Seeing Mintz go through illness, injury, and adversity and speak openly about his mental health inspired her to keep fighting.

“It helped me a lot. I’ve been struggling recently because I keep thinking I’ll need another Cortisone shot in one of my hips because it just hurts really bad in the winter from the tightness. Seeing him be so positive and be open and knowing the connection we had after seeing so many Kentucky fans back there, that he could have told another story, it helped so much.”

“He honestly is a fighter,” Lunsford added. “I see him in me and I see a piece of me, honestly, in him. He’s a light that I can kind of just look up to and see that. He’s grown and he’s so open about all of these things especially that have gone on in the past few years that I feel like I’m able to do that too and it’s not as emotional anymore because he’s there and I can say, ‘Hey, I understand.'”

Throughout last season, Mintz talked about the mental toll the pandemic took on the team and himself. Armed with a clear mind and his emotional support dog Ghost, he returned to Kentucky for another season in hopes of forging a true connection with fans. Little did he know he’d get one in the hallways of Allen Fieldhouse after not scoring a single point in Kentucky’s signature win.

“My heart was kind of heavy because I knew I had been struggling a while,” Mintz said last night. “Just to realize that God made me somebody that could make someone else feel special about themself, that just sent me over the top, and I knew. My parents saw it, my cousin was at the game, he saw it. She couldn’t even keep herself together and that meant so much to me that it meant so much to her. That right there is what motivates me, that people can feel so special about themselves and it made me work hard and get in the gym. That’s what turned out for today. So, thank her if she’s listening right now.”

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“A dream come true”

Lunsford’s mom Wendy woke her up at 5 a.m. to see that Mintz told their story after the game.

“It was like a dream come true, honestly,” Lunsford said. “He is just so nice and I could just tell there was a special connection we were able to make and then waking up and just hearing, wow, that’s me that he’s talking about.”

It’s been a happy week in the Lunsford household. A dot of Kentucky blue in the Kansas countryside, they’ve been proudly sporting their Wildcat gear all week. Last night, Lunsford was going nuts in her living room watching Mintz break out of his slump.

“It was crazy. I was just like, this is insane! This just happened and I just met him and he went off and did that. I can’t even talk about it. Mindblown.”

“She literally has had this smile on her face since last Saturday,” Wendy said. “To be truthful, living in Kansas it’s hard to be a Kentucky fan sometimes but she’s like, that’s my friend, look at him go! Look at him go! Just his defense and some passes that he made, she was like, ‘Ohhh!’ All kinds of excitement. It was a good night in our house.”

Living in Kansas, Lunsford doesn’t get to see the Cats play often. The stars aligned on Saturday to make it happen, for both her and Mintz.

“It’s been my dream all since I have grown up, all I’ve talked about is one day, that’s going to be me. I’m going to meet the Kentucky Basketball team. I’m so glad it could be this year and be able to meet all of these amazing players like TyTy, Oscar, and Mintz. It was just amazing.”

“Life is crazy,” Mintz said last night. “When you’re so stuck in yourself and you’re fighting in your everyday struggles and some things may not be perfect in your life, everyone needs situations like that. I never expected that someone would be crying about me. Honestly, sometimes I think like, man, it’s just basketball. I’m here, they love it, they love us but these people have personal connections to us and she felt some type of way that day and it was just crazy. She had [Immanuel] Quickley’s jersey on and she just kept crying as I was signing it and she was like, ‘I tried to get yours!’ I said, ‘It’s okay,’ and I comforted her.

“It was crazy that these people — I’m speaking for more than her — that people out here feel this way about us, so that’s why we go out there and fight. That’s why we go out there and give it our all. This means a lot to people. And I appreciate and I feel the love everywhere since the moment I came back and since the moment I stepped here.”