“It kicked my butt pretty good,” Renfrow said. “Last year, I fluctuated in weight; I went down to 150 pounds. I had like seven straight days of 103-degree fevers. It’s tough to play when you’re not feeling great.”
After spending a year consulting with doctors and getting the condition under control, he’s ready to make his comeback.
He said he’s “actually a little heavy now,” but said that meant being around 187 pounds instead of 185. “I was eating too many Oreos at night; I’ve got to run a little more,” he joked.
But those kind of small differences, the kinds an athlete notices, are the reasons he’s sure he wants to do this again after a year away.
“It’s just trying to get back, trying to get healthy, trying to do something I love,” he said when asked about a year out of the game. ” I enjoyed other parts of life. We had our second daughter, so enjoying that and just wanting to make sure if I’m going to come back and give my time and attention to something that I was going to be all in on it.”
And coming from where he was — the hyper-competitive former walk-on, who lacked the energy to compete some days — convinced him that giving this another shot was something he very much wanted to do.