On the night that Brad Wendland’s heart stopped on the football
sideline, I had a late-night phone conversation with Waseca High School activities
director Joe Hedervare. Joe was in his car outside a hospital in Mankato, where
Brad had been taken by ambulance. At that point, no one knew how Brad was doing.
What happened that night and beyond is remarkable.
Here’s the story, originally posted on Sept. 15 …
Brad
Wendland wants you to do something, no matter who you are, where you live or
where you work or go to school. Wendland, the head football coach at Waseca
High School, knows he is lucky to be alive and he wants others to have the
second chance he’s getting.
His heart stopped beating during a game two weeks
ago. Wendland collapsed on the sideline and athletic trainers from Waseca and
St. Peter (the visiting team), joined by a nurse who was in the stands and
others, absolutely saved his life. They maintained his airway, they did chest
compressions, they used an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to shock his
heart.
Wendland was fortunate. When he was struck by
sudden cardiac arrest, he was surrounded by people who were trained in
life-saving skills, at a school that had implemented plans to handle such a
crisis.
“You’d better put in (this story) the importance of
CPR training and having AEDs available,” Brad told me as we talked this week.
“If one person hears it and does it, or one person in the crowd that night gets
a checkup or asks at work, ‘Where’s our AED,’ or gets trained in CPR, it will
be worth it.”
Wendland, 48, is a Blue Earth native who teaches
U.S. history and psychology in Waseca. He has been the Bluejays head football
coach for 16 years. He was hospitalized in Mankato from Friday night until
going home on Wednesday. He’s tired, he’s getting lots of rest, reading
get-well cards and writing thank you notes, grateful to be with his wife Kim
and their three children. (In this photo, Wendland talks to the team after the
final game of the 2020 season.)
He felt lightheaded during
the final minute of Waseca’s 21-13 Week 1 victory. He was thinking of taking a
knee and wait until his head cleared, but he went down in a heap. Troy Hoehn,
the athletic trainer at Waseca High School, ran to Wendland and started yelling
his name. There was no response. St. Peter athletic trainer Leah Rutz sprinted
across the field. Krystal Malis, who works as an emergency room nurse at Mayo
Clinic Health System Hospital in Waseca and has two sons who play football, ran
down from the stands and leaped over the fence that surrounds the field. Waseca
activities director Joe Hedervare, who was in the press box, rushed to the
field while dialing 911.
“He wasn’t responding to me,”
Hoehn said. “I’m checking on him, trying to see what’s going on to get an
assessment. Leah had grabbed the AED, the nurse was doing chest compressions
and it seemed like it all happened at once.”
Rutz and Malis switched
positions between compressions and the AED. In the midst of stunned silence at
the football field, they heard the siren of the approaching ambulance.
After the AED shock, Rutz
resumed chest compressions. “I could feel his heart beating again,” she said. “
‘Oh, there’s a pulse! I can feel it!’ We knew he was beating on his own again.
He started moving a little. Then he was awake. He said, ‘I want to get up, my
chest hurts, can I get up?’
“That’s when it really
started to kick in, what we were doing. This is not a mannequin, this is a real
human.”
Malis didn’t realize the
person they were treating was Wendland until he woke up.
“Somebody said, ‘Brad,
you’re going to be all right.’ He was the last person I would have imagined,”
she said. “He’s been instrumental with my kids. He’s talked to them about
making good choices and things like that, and I know he’s done that wiyh all
the kids. He’s a blessing.”
None
of the three medical professionals had ever done
this before. They had trained, of course, in all manner of live-saving skills.
And the training paid off.
Hoehn and Rutz both work for Mayo Clinic Health
System. Hoehn, who is Rutz’s supervisor, has been an athletic trainer for 23
years.
“I’ve seen a lot but I haven’t seen this,” he said.
“You carry that AED with you all the time, and crutches and other things you
may need. It’s better to be prepared.”
Indeed, preparation was key to saving the coach’s
life. The MSHSL encourages schools to have AEDs readily available, along with
Emergency Action Plans for all teams and activities.
Five years ago, Waseca didn’t have athletic
trainers at most events.
“Mayo started ramping up athletic training services
in our area, and that shouldn’t be overlooked,” Hedervare said. “Five years ago
this story could have been completely different.
“I communicate what comes from the League,” he
said. “We have to have emergency plans in place, we have to practice them,
everybody has to be aware of what’s going on, especially at a practice
situation. If it would have happened anywhere else, I’m not sure our response
would have been good.
“We have Emergency Action Plans for all our teams.
I have heard from people (at other schools), saying they’re going to take these
things a lot more seriously. This drove the point home, that we were able to
implement this at a home event and it went as well as it did. It’s humbling,
it’s crazy. We’re so glad we have the plan in place and everything worked out
as it did.”
As Wendland woke up, he wondered where Kim was. She
was waiting for him at the ambulance. As the ambulance began pulling away,
Wendland heard a noise he recognized: The crowd was cheering. For him.
“That’s one of the things that’s been so
overwhelming about this whole thing,” he said. “This happened in front of a
thousand people, most of whom I know. To put that big of a scare into people
that are that important to me, it was really hard to wrap my head around.”
The Bluejays
played without their head coach at Marshall last week, coming home with a 19-7
win. The evening before, the team maintained tradition and held a pasta feed at
school. Kim drove Brad to the gathering, which was emotional.
“I got to talk to them, I got to hug them,”
Wendland said. “It was good therapy for me and I think it was good for them.
The last time they saw me it wasn’t good.”
Before and after the game in Marshall, the players
wore blue t-shirts with the word “Coach” on the front and “Waseca Strong” on
the back. Wendland watched the game online, stayed in contact with Hedervare
via text and talked on the phone at halftime with the coaches. Immediately
after the game, he and the team reunited via FaceTime.
Wendland will have his first post-incident medical
appointment on Monday. Right now there is no timetable for returning to
teaching or coaching.
“I feel fine, I’m strong mentally, I feel like I
have been since I came to,” he said. “I’m groggy, I’m tired, I don’t have the
vigor I normally have. I’m trying to sleep as much as I can and hoping that gets
a little bit better every day. I don’t like to sit around at home all day, but
under the circumstances I’m OK with it.”
Wendland has learned how lucky he is to have
collapsed where and when he did. According to the Mayo Clinic, sudden cardiac arrest is the third-leading cause of
death in the U.S, and nine out of 10 people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest
away from a hospital do not survive. Had Westland collapsed while walking to
his car later in the evening, for example, the outcome could have been much
different.
“I feel blessed,” he said. “I’m in bonus time.
That’s the term I’ve been using. I really like my life. Every day is a good
day.”
--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of
Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn
and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.
Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
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