By James Peacock

Xavier Kistoo-Miles is a 6’3’’ shooting guard for Manhattanville College who has always had a desire to help people. This desire, evident from an early age, has guided him throughout his life. It guided him through adolescent years spent as a volunteer firefighter, and it guided him first to the University of New Haven, then to Rockland Community College, then finally to Manhattanville College, a school with a talented basketball team and a renowned nursing program. Now, heading into his senior year, this desire will guide him to a (slight) change in his major, from nursing to radiologic technology.  

Such a pivot will mean a continuation of the extensive workload that accompanies any major in any medical field, along with long hours spent in hospitals for clinicals. Academic workloads such as this can be hard to manage in and of themselves but, when coupled with being a high-level Division III athlete (which can be like having a full-time job), they can seem overwhelming to outside observers. Xavier, however, takes it all in stride.  

“It is a lot like nursing in terms of [having] clinicals, going to hospitals. It’s going to be difficult, but I think I am going to be able to get through it…education comes first,” he says.  

Xavier Kistoo-Miles grew up in Spring Valley, New York, a town of 33,000, about 22 miles north of Manhattan. He grew up in a household headed by parents who are both still nurses, so he has been around nurses and hospitals his entire life. He is somebody who has seen the highs and the lows that are part of the daily life of being in the medical profession. After briefly switching his major to sports studies for the second semester of his junior year, these experiences that he has borne witness to influenced his thinking about his major:  

“I was thinking about going back into nursing, but ultimately decided to go with RadTech (Radiologic Technology) instead,” he continues, “I do like helping people, but I’ve seen a lot of the stress that my mom has working in a hospital, especially during COVID…she was overworked a lot.”  

A decision of whether to switch one’s major is an important one that weighs heavily on the mind of any college student, athlete or otherwise. For Xavier, however, he had the additional burden of recently being diagnosed with Rhabdomyolysis, often called “rhabdo,” for short. This rare, treatable condition is one that the CDC describes the following way:  

“…when damaged muscle tissue releases its proteins and electrolytes into the blood. These substances can damage the heart and kidneys and cause permanent disability or even death.”  

It is a condition that afflicts less than 200,000 people per year and can be caused by an injury gone wrong, or simply by overexercising, according to the Mayo Clinic. Xavier believes that his case was caused by the latter, perhaps a time or two too many of intensive weightlifting and conditioning, followed by hours of putting up shots in the gym.  

Since he got diagnosed, just prior to leaving for North Carolina—where his family now resides—for the summer, Xavier hasn’t been able to get started on the basketball team’s offseason conditioning program, but he is feeling better and hopes that another round of bloodwork will reveal that he is past it. 

Once that is the case, it will be full steam ahead for the rising senior. He seems to have a particular itch to get back in the lab and work on his game following a junior season that ended in a way that left him with a bitter taste. Though the Valiants finished the year with an impressive 21-8 record and Xavier put up solid averages, the season ended with two bitter losses to Farmingdale State College and Neumann University by six and seven points, respectively. In that final game against Neumann, Xavier had perhaps his finest performance of the season, leading his team in scoring with 16 points on 11 shots, including going 4-7 from three-point range.  

However, it is his team’s loss to number-one-seeded Farmingdale in the Skyline Conference Championship game that has stuck with Xavier. In the penultimate game of the season, Xavier didn’t play to his usual standards on offense, though he did have a solid defensive game, registering two blocks. This outcome still bothers him.  

“I froze up a little bit,” he recalls, “coming into the next season, I know what to do and I’ll be better prepared. I hope to get back to that stage and I hope it’s against them…I want that rematch.”  

As a player, he describes himself as cerebral, looking to get the defense into mismatches and break down his defender, though he notes that he also derives great joy out of dishing the ball to his teammates and putting them in positions to be successful. This unselfish, thinking man’s approach to basketball makes perfect sense when considered in the larger context of what he hopes to do when his time at Manhattanville comes to a close.  

He hopes to find a job, ideally as a nurse or as a radiologist, where he can be both financially stable and happy in his profession.  

“My future [hopefully] comes with a lot of money…and is hopefully something in radiology. My original plan was to become a nurse-practitioner and eventually a travelling-nurse, but I’ve got to see where radiology takes me,” he says.  

Wherever that path takes him, whether it be to a career as a radiologist, or back into the nursing profession (which would require additional schooling beyond his undergraduate work) he knows that he’s made great connections and great friends during his time at Manhattanville and elsewhere. He hopes that he maintains those relationships and connections throughout his life, regardless of where his career ultimately ends up.  

For now though, Xavier Kistoo-Miles enters his senior year at Manhattanville with two distinct goals: to graduate with a degree in radiologic technology and for his team to win the Skyline Conference for the second time in their history. To know Xavier—his story, his demeanor and his work ethic—is to know that these goals, and far more, are certainly within reach.