By Taylor Spooner, Reporter

Sophomore Riley Coyle is a competitive swimmer and trained athlete who came upon an unexpected road block.

“I first noticed it myself when my heart would start to beat really fast and then suddenly stop beating,”  Coyle said.

She was having an irregular heart beat, also known as heart palpitations, that caused her to not be able to swim for about a month.

“They put me on a taper for two weeks,” Coyle said.

A taper restrains someone from doing any physical activity for a period of time.

Fortunately for Coyle, after tests and doctor visits, her heart turned out to be fine with the help of some medication and relaxation. Not all cases are this lucky.

In the past year, there was a two-week period all over the United States where four students had different unexpected fatalities.

The sudden rush of student athletes experiencing heart failure brought up many questions- and some wondered whether there should be widespread health screening before young people can participate in sports. Most high schools and colleges require students to complete a health history questionnaire including a physical exam before they participate.

“A lot of the things these student are dying from are not checked when they are given a physical,” said Brian Aversa, Kaneland varsity baseball coach and former Milliken College athlete. “Even if you are just in off season conditioning, it could happen to anyone.”

It happened to Wes Leonhard, a 16 year old Michigan basketball player who made headlines when during one of his games he shot the winning basket, was picked up by jubilant teammates, and then collapsed seconds later. The crowd went silent as the coaches and players started to surround him.

After having CPR done, he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death? Cardiac arrest due to an enlarged heart.

After the death of their son, Leonhard’s parents started the Wes Leonhard Foundation to help prevent sudden incidents like this from occurring in high school athletes.

One of the goals set up by the foundation is requiring schools to use a comprehensive standard physical form to be filled out by qualified physicians. They’re working on making this happen.

“I think it could be prevented if athletes were checked out,” Coyle said.

An electrocardiogram test is currently being tested to see if it could help prevent more casualties. An ECG is used to measure any damage to the heart, how fast it is beating, the effects of drugs or devices used to control the heart and the size and potential of heart chambers. This simple check up could detect a lot of early symptoms of cardiac arrest and heart attacks.

Another potential cause of death for high school athletes has been sudden cardiac arrest. According to the American Heart Association, the incidence of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest in high school athletes ranges from .28 to one death per 100,000 high school athletes in the United States, and four out of five incidents happen at home.

It has been reported by the AHA that effective bystander CPR provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or triple a person’s chance of survival. However, only 32 percent of victims receive this treatment.

“It messed with my training schedule and took me a long time to get back into shape,” Coyle said.

Simple checkups yearly could help prevent or detect some of these incidents from occurring.