Mid-Michigan high schools prepare for medical emergencies during sporting events and practices

Ryan Klingler coached and tutored Wes Leonard at Fennville High School. The town has fewer than 1,800 residents, so it’s rare for news from such a small town to have an impact across Michigan

However, the school made headlines at the end of a 2011 basketball game. Leonard collapsed on the pitch and went into cardiac arrest. He died and it was later revealed that he had a heart condition. After Leonard’s death, his parents, Klingler, and some family friends formed the Wes Leonard Heart Team in his honor.

“Our primary goals were obviously to raise awareness of what sudden cardiac arrest is and how to be prepared for it,” Klingler said, “and to equip schools across Michigan with automated external defibrillators (AEDs).”

Leonard’s death was fresh in public memory with the fall of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who collapsed on the field and suffered sudden cardiac arrest during a Jan. 2 game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Hamlin survived in large part due to the quick response of the teams’ athletic coaches.

Cartier Woods, a senior at Detroit’s Northwest High School, died after suffering cardiac arrest during a game on Jan. 31. Bystanders said that efforts were made immediately to save his life. He died a week later after his family removed him from life support. He remained unresponsive in the intensive care unit.

When someone goes into sudden cardiac arrest, Klingler says it’s critical that bystanders know how to respond properly because hospital survival rates are extremely low.

“Punctuality is of the utmost importance in cardiac arrest,” said Klingler. “So when someone goes into cardiac arrest, they want to make sure they’re doing CPR. It’s a huge thing. And then having an AED, those are two things that will really help extend someone’s life.”

Hamlin’s injury sparked a nationwide discussion about heart health and how to stay prepared. Klinger noticed that himself. The Wes Leonard Heart Team now has a waiting list of about 75 Michigan schools requesting AEDs.

“I think the awareness of having these AEDs around has definitely increased with Damar with his incident,” Klingler said, “and people want to be more prepared.”

A big reason Hamlin survived is due to the quick response of the Bills’ and Bengals’ training staff. However, most athletes don’t have the same resources at their disposal as NFL players. The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA), for example, has 180,000 athletes in any given year, according to communications director Geoff Kimmerly.

Kimmerly has only dealt with two or three heart-related incidents in his 11 years on the job, but he said the MHSAA has regulations in place to ensure athletes receive the proper care.

“Starting with the 2015-16 school year, we are requiring all varsity principals to be CPR certified,” Kimmerly said. “We’ve expanded this requirement to all sub-varsity teams this 2022-23 school year… This is really to hopefully guarantee that at every exercise or event, someone is certified in CPR and has those skills to save someone’s life.” “

Kimmerly also said that the MHSAA has partnered with the MI HEARTSafe initiative to help them achieve this goal. In addition to providing schools with AEDs, the program also identifies schools that are particularly well prepared for cardiac emergencies.

Waverly High School has earned that designation. Athletic trainer Jessica Gude, who oversees 2,000 students, says the coaches’ CPR training allows her to do her job more efficiently.

“When I’m in softball and there’s a football game going on,” Gude said, “it’s good to know that even if I can’t get there in 30 seconds, a coach can get started for me.”

Part of training for one is teaching trainers how to use AEDs and making sure they have access to them when needed.

Gude said Waverly keeps four AEDs on the high school’s campus, including one that she carries to all home sporting events and street soccer games.

“It’s tended to faster,” she said. “It saves me from having to say, ‘Hey, get it,’ … If I can get out there and start CPR right away, that’s going to make all the difference. It could make the difference between life and death.”

While groups like the Wes Leonard Heart Team and MI HEARTSafe are getting more AEDs in schools, there are still some without the equipment. These are often smaller schools in smaller communities, so having several on hand is rare. Bath High School, for example, has fewer than 400 students but has four on-site AEDs. Athletic trainer Kelly Paquet thinks that’s a luxury.

“I have colleagues who don’t even have an AED at some of their locations,” she said.

As important as AEDs are, schools need a plan to safely and quickly transport athletes who go into cardiac arrest to a hospital. Another MHSAA initiative was for all new coaches to develop an emergency plan of action in the event of a cardiac emergency.

Kimmerly recalled a case last summer at Hastings High School, where an action plan saved the life of a Potterville athlete who was having a sudden heart attack.

“Luckily there was an ER doctor in the stands watching his kid’s team,” Kimmerly said, “but we also had people in Hastings who had a plan that would send people to the door so they could order the paramedics.” There was a strength coach who could come down and start CPR right away. There were people who went and got the AED off the wall right in front of the gym.”

Paquet works at Bath through the Sparrow Health System, which has contracts with 16 Lansing-area high schools. According to Paquet, one benefit of this affiliation is that each school has a standardized plan of action.

“We standardized all of our contingency plans about four or five years ago,” she said. “We’ll cover for each other if someone’s sick or someone’s on vacation … So if I’m covering for someone else, we kind of have that.”

Hamlin survived because the medical staff had a plan of action to get him the care he needed. While Hamlin had multiple doctors who could perform CPR within seconds of collapsing, high school athletes may need an athletic trainer or coach to save them until an ambulance arrives.

For Gude, the reaction to Hamlin on TV gives her confidence that she could help in a similar situation.

“We went through the education and training,” she said, “so watching them do it in real time makes the training meaningful, which is helpful because you’re always like, ‘I have the AED, I know for sure ‘what I would do.’ But when you’re in that situation, it’s totally different.”

No matter how prepared Gude, Paquet, or other athletic trainers may be, nothing can tell them when a player might go into cardiac arrest. Paquet said that because of this, she must always be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

“I go to work every day and that’s a scenario I think could happen,” she said. “Even sudden cardiac death for a congenital thing kids don’t even know they have, those are risks.”

This worst-case scenario happened at Northwestern High School in Detroit. Woods was resuscitated for nearly 40 minutes, the school had an AED and access to a nearby hospital where he was on life support.

Kimmerly emphasized the importance of being prepared for help in the event of sudden cardiac arrest, as it can happen to anyone, including athletes like Woods.

“I think most people assume that maybe it’s just the older grandparents in the stands watching a game or something,” Kimmerly said. “But it could be an official, it could be a coach, it could be an athlete, it could be anyone.”

He remembered the advice an administrator had given him.

“We could go our entire careers without ever using this AED on the wall,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t have it and shouldn’t know how to use it.”