BILLINGS — Three-year-old Gabby Schultz doesn’t know she's an inspiration. She just knows how to smile, how to fight through hard days and how to chase her sisters around the basketball court in the front yard.
Gabby was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a rare and severe congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped. In simple terms, Gabby lives with half a heart. Only her right ventricle works.
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Her father Corey is an assistant coach with the Shepherd boys basketball team, which advanced to Saturday night at the Class B state tournament in Bozeman last week. Her mother is Kayleen (née Goggins), a former Shepherd athlete and Montana State Billings women's basketball player.
Together with their other daughters Daisy and Della, the Schultz family is resolved to stack the good days for Gabby.
“She has essentially half a heart,” Kayleen explained of Gabby's struggles. “To live with a single ventricle heart is really a miracle, to live past 5, 10 years old. People who are adults right now with single ventricle hearts — it’s kind of unbelievable.”
Gabby’s has already had a series of high-stakes surgeries. She underwent the Norwood procedure at not even a week old, then the Glenn procedure at five months. The final stage in the typical three-part process, the Fontan surgery, is usually done between ages 3 and 5.
This past year was supposed to be a test to see if Gabby would qualify. She didn’t. Now the Schultz family faces a daunting path.
“Transplant is her only option,” Kayleen said. “To live a long life, transplant is her only option.”
One phrase captures the Schultz family’s approach. It’s the three words printed on shirts and posters and etched into their daily mindset: Win the day.
It came to life before Gabby was born. Her parents met when Kayleen was playing basketball at MSUB, where she's now a member of the school's athletic hall of fame. One day Corey scribbled those three words on a sticky note and put it on Kayleen's mirror as a form of motivation.
Years later, it became something else.
“When Gabby was born, it just kind of was our family term: Win the day,” her mom said. “We’re going to take this one day at a time. All of our little wins are going to add up.”
If the phrase has reached beyond the Schultz home, it’s because of the communities that have rallied around them, especially through basketball.
Shepherd and many of its contemporary small towns around the area rallied in support of Gabby's fight throughout this past basketball season.
"Win the day" has grown into more than a motto. It’s become a way others have rallied around the Schultz family. From students pledging a dollar for every point they scored to schools wearing “Win the Day” shirts, communities turned games into something bigger than sports.
Those gestures touched Gabby's parents and showed them just how far their daughter’s story has traveled.
“I just relate it back to sports and being a college athlete,” Corey said. “If you stack really good days, good things happen.
“That’s kind of the way we took it with Gabby. Just win every day, and hopefully at the end of all those days we’re way farther ahead than we were when we started. And I think that’s what’s happened so far.”
