WFU's Mike Muse recalls his attempt to save Coach Skip Prosser.
WINSTON-SALEM -- A day after the funeral of Wake Forest Head Basketball Coach Skip Prosser, we're learning more about his final moments and the friend and colleague who tried to save him.
Mike Muse, Wake Forest’s director of basketball operations, is the man who found Skip unresponsive in his office.
"I never ask why. This just teaches me that God's power is a whole lot more than what we can humanly do,” said Muse.
It was a day like any other. Youth basketball camps were in full swing on campus and future Deacon recruitment was taking place all over the country. Prosser was just finishing up a noon jog.
“I had just seen him before he came to the office," Muse explained. "He was running on the track and I yelled out to him, ‘Hey coach, you doing your mile today? Are you going to ride your bike?’ because he and I would always compare, and I said, ‘Coach, I'll be right back. I'll give you the rundown on camp.’
Mike Muse
"He goes, 'Great job this week, Muse. I'll see you in a few minutes.'"
When Muse returned to the athletic center just 10 minutes later, a secretary asked him to check on the coach because his office seemed unusually quiet. Muse found Prosser slumped over on his couch and took action immediately.
“I tried to get air into his lungs as quick as I could,” Muse recalled.
Then he sprinted to the nearby student health center to get help.
“At that point we put him on the floor. Scott did the breathing and I did the chest compressions and the defibrillator showed up after five or six rounds," said Muse.
Prosser was taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. Muse gathered the current players and closed that week's session of youth basketball camp.
“The good Lord gave me the strength from somewhere because to make that speech that Coach Prosser usually makes and address the parents and the kids, I don't know how, it wasn't me. It just wasn't me," said Muse.
But even in the time of great hardship, Muse finds comfort in knowing he did everything he could to save his friend.
“The good Lord has always had us in the right place at the right time and there was a reason that I was there and there's a reason for this and why I'm going through it and I'll just see where he leads me."