Athletic trainer credited with saving lacrosse player's life after cardiac emergency

A quick-thinking athletic trainer in Ohio is being credited with saving the life of a senior lacrosse player after he collapsed during the team’s final regular-season game. Centerville High School lacrosse team captain Grant Mays, 17, was hit in the chest with the lacrosse ball during an on-goal shot by an opposing Moeller team player in the third quarter, WLWT5.com reported.

Mays recovered the ball and passed it to a teammate, but then collapsed around the 40-yard line.

Moeller athletic trainer Craig Lindsey told WLWT5.com that he didn’t see the ball hit him, but ran on to the field as soon as he fell.

“As soon as I lifted his jersey up and saw the reddened area, I knew we were dealing with an event called commodial coris event,” Lindsey told the news station. “It’s where the heart is in between beats and there is a direct blow to the chest wall.”

There have only been 180 documented cases of commodial coris over the last 20 years, WLWT5.com reported. Lindsey said his training prepared for this moment.

“It throws the heart into this quivering nonfunctional state,” Lindsey told WLWT5.com. “It’s one of those things where you hope it doesn’t happen on your clock but if it does, you prepare for it.”

Lindsey used an automated external defibrillator (AED) to shock Mays’ heart back into a normal rhythm.

“Thank God we had the accessibility of it and we were able to put it to use and we had a positive outcome which is the blessing at the end of the day,” Lindsey told WLWT5.com.

Mays was taken to the hospital and released, and he will graduate with his classmates this weekend.

“It was certainly a scary moment because it was not a routine exhaustion,” Troy Stehlin, Centerville lacrosse head coach, told WLWT5.com. “That AED was the difference between a young man going on to succeed at Miami University and whatever else he has in store and him not moving on with that part of his life.”