When the Plan Works

By Wayne Ryan
WVSSAC Executive Director

Administrators, coaches, and officials know the feeling. Another policy. Another certification requirement. Another box to check on a list that never seems to get shorter.

It’s easy to view Emergency Action Plans as a procedural obligation rather than a practical tool. Until the moment they aren’t.

On the evening of April 6, a grandparent in attendance at a middle school baseball game in Hurricane collapsed due to cardiac arrest. What happened next is worth sharing.

Athletic Director Dustin Walls described it this way:

“We had quick responding parents within seconds jump to get the AED at our field and begin compressions… Due to the quick response of our parents that were closest to the scene (multiple nurses), use of an onsite AED, and response of 9-1-1, the individual had a stable pulse when being transported from the field to the hospital.”

Walls reached out not to report the incident, but to make a point and to offer his school’s experience as a resource for anyone making the case for CPR/AED certification and onsite emergency preparedness. His words: “It is literally the difference between life and death in these situations, and there should be no gambling with any of it.”

He’s right.

West Virginia member schools have faced three cardiac emergencies in the last 18 months. In each case, the outcome depended on whether an Emergency Action Plan was in place and whether the people present knew how to execute it.

The EAP is not a formality. It is a practiced, rehearsed response, and it works when administrators and coaches treat it that way.

To Dustin Walls and everyone at Hurricane Middle School: thank you for how you responded that night, and for taking the time to share it.

Want to see more from our team? Save the WVSSAC as a preferred source in Google