CHARLOTTE — Along with football practice and applying to colleges, one high school senior is working to raise awareness of a rare heart condition by sharing his story.
Ford Mauntel is a student-athlete and a camp counselor, but he’s also living with a congenital heart condition that required surgery soon after he was born. He says he spent a lot of his early life at Atrium Health Levine Children’s Hospital.
Mauntel was born with hypoplastic right heart syndrome, a condition where the heart doesn’t fully develop, causing lower oxygen levels.
Mauntel underwent three surgeries before he turned 4 years old. Today, he’s thriving — a senior at Charlotte Catholic High School and a kicker on the football team. He spends his summers supporting other children with congenital heart defects.
“How I explain it to my friends is that the right part of my heart is not there, so I always say I have half a heart,” he told Channel 9’s Miana Massey.
Mauntel says he and his family had to be strong from the very beginning. For him, the condition is just a part of his life, but it doesn’t define it.
His family says those early years were filled with doctor visits, uncertainty and a lot of faith. Even now, he’ll need lifelong monitoring, but through it all, his mother, Adrienne Mauntel, says he’s continued to fight, refusing to let his diagnosis limit his future.
“When you look at a kid like Ford, he looks totally normal,” his mother said. “He looks healthy. He is healthy, but kids with CHDS, they deal with this every day. It’s a condition that does not go away.”
Now, Mauntel hopes his story will serve as an inspiration to others and help more people understand what it means to live with congenital heart disease.
“It’s something that’s going to be a lifelong journey for me,” he said. “My surgeries didn’t fix my heart. It helped, so it’s always going to be there. I want to help people with their journey.”
Tune in to Eyewitness News at 5 p.m. for more on Mauntel’s journey.
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