High school football teams around the country are beginning offseason workouts, and inevitably some of those workouts take tragic turns.
The latest tragedy is out of Grand Ledge, Mich., where an incoming high school freshman, Everson Guild, died after losing consciousness during a training session in the Grand Ledge High School weight room.
Grand Ledge Public Schools superintendent Brian Metcalf said in a statement that Guild was participating in a “voluntary, routine football workout,” according to The Detroit News.
“He was actually finishing a lift at that time and there was other boys that were around him spotting,” football coach Matt Bird told TV station WSYM. “We always make sure that safety is our number one concern.”
Bird reportedly attempted CPR, and coaches and school staff used an AED in an attempt to rescue the boy. Emergency personnel arrived on the scene just minutes after Guild lost consciousness.
The cause of death is still unknown, but sports doctor Randy Pearson told WYSM that there are a number of possible reasons why Guild may have lost consciousness — ranging from exercise-induced asthma to an aneurysm.
Pearson said that annual sports physicals are important to help detect abnormalities that could lead to these kinds of deaths, but that even those aren’t always enough.
“Any kind of an abnormal heart rhythm, unless we happen to catch during the physical exam, we wouldn’t be able to find,” Pearson said. “If an individual has an asymptomatic aneurysm in their brain, we wouldn’t be able to find that.”
