Last year, when Brogan Kelly was a 17-year-old junior at Seabreeze High School in Volusia County, a starting linebacker on the school’s football team and a wrestler, with plans for college football. He was also among 1,500 students who participated in AdventHealth’s free screenings for student athletes in Flagler and Volusia counties. The screenings include an electrocardiogram, a painless, unintrusive test that analyzes heart health.
The test detected an anomaly in a Brogan’s right coronary artery, which could have led to fatal, sudden cardiac arrest if untreated. After Brogan’s parents followed through with rapid referrals and consultations, Brogan underwent surgery, the anomaly was corrected, and six months later he was back on the field. That year, he was one of 38 students among the 1,500 that took the test in Volusia and Flagler whom AdventHealth determined had some abnormality, five of whom were high risk. The tests enabled the necessary follow-up care.
Physicals are required for student athletes in Florida’s public schools. The free ECG tests are not, though the Florida High School Athletic Association recommends them. AdventHealth, which has a partnership with Flagler schools, now makes them regularly available–usually at one of the two high schools’ campuses–as part of the physicals, which take only a few minutes.
“We can find these underlying heart conditions before children go into heart failure or die. This should be the standard of care yearly for every child that wants to play sports,” a parent told the Flagler County School Board on Tuesday, after describing how her own son Cooper’s congenital heart disease, or CHD, was discovered after an EKG when he was very young. “If Cooper were to walk in here right now, you’d never know by looking at him on the outside. He looks like your average 14-year-old young man. But if he were to take his shirt off, you would immediately see his zipper scar that shows his years and years of bravery. I share the story with you today because if it wasn’t for that doctor ordering that EKG along with the Echo, I’d be telling you a very different story.”
Flagler County School Board member Colleen Conklin thinks such routine tests should be added to local requirements for student athletes. To her, it’s a no-brainer, a mere extension of physicals.
Fellow-School Board member Will Furry disagrees. It should be a parent’s choice, he said at a board workshop on Tuesday.
The School Board discussed the issue for the fourth or fifth time in recent months as the district has been crafting a new policy on student-athlete physicals. The school administration presented four options to the board:
- Option 1: A Cardiology Report Electrocardiogram, or ECG, would be required every year for all high school student athletes participating in competitive sports, with an allowance to opt-out each year.
- Option two: The ECG requirement would apply every two years, with ninth and 11th grade students required to take the test, as well as for any student-athlete participating for the first time, and with an allowance to opt-out.
- Option three: A student athlete would have to take an ECG before participating in his, her or their first athletic program at any point in the four years of high school. But the ECG would be required only once in that four-year window. An opt-out would be allowed.
- Option four: the current approach through AdventHealth’s free screenings. In May, 628 student athletes receive the free physical, but only 506, or 81 percent, took the ECG. While it was a substantial improvement over the previous year, it is still nowhere near full participation.
Tommy Wooleyhan, the district’s school safety specialist, relaying the feeling of coaches, said the fourth option is favored. Board member Christy Chong likes the third option–recommending it once during the four years, but still not as a mandate. Like Furry, she wants that to be up to a parent.
“I would be fine with supporting it one time,” Conklin said. “I think we should make it mandatory.” She mentioned the case of a mother who by chance may have opted out but “blew it off” in the end–and AdventHealth alerted her that her child, a student in Flagler County, had a heart issue. “I just think we protect everyone if we mandate it, and there’s plenty of time to get it done. But it really, literally could save a child’s life. I am struggling with understanding why we wouldn’t mandate it. I don’t see the religious reason behind not mandating it.”
To Furry, it’s black and white. “I encourage every parent to take advantage of the screening that is provided on campus with our partnership with AdventHealth,” he said. “But I promised voters that I would not vote for a mandate down here at the local level.” Furry appeared to be mixing his mandates: the ECG screenings began long after the Covid pandemic had subsided, as had the ideological drumbeat against mask and vaccine mandates. His opposition to mandates was selective: he does not oppose the physicals student athletes must comply with before playing, which are a mandate. The distinction he makes is that if the state doesn’t mandate it, the district should not.
“We’re not the parent. Let the parent decide that,” Furry said. “It’s a slippery slope, when you start putting mandates here at the local level that are not handed down by the state.” He did not explain the slippery slope other than to claim that a subsequent board could place “more restrictive” policies in place. (The ECG requirement would not be a restriction–it is not even comparable to masks, which were said to hinder a child’s breathing–but a precaution. The test itself is a few minutes long.)
“We are charged to make those kinds of mandates on a local level, and ultimately we are financially also responsible for this district. It puts a major liability in our hands,” Conklin said, dismissing the contention that waivers protect the district. “If you think that there’s any kid’s parent whose child dropped dead on a field did not sue that school district, I don’t care what kind of waiver they signed, it’s irrelevant.”
“They likely would sue us either way then, based on that logic” Furry said.
“If you mandate it, you are protecting the children on the field, period,” Conklin said. “If parents want to choose not to get the EKG then their children can’t play sports in Flagler County. It’s a not just a health issue, but a liability issue.”
But the board, as so often on notable issue, was split over the mandate, with Conklin and Board member Cheryl Massaro on one side, and Furry, Chong and Sally Hunt on the other. The board is expected to vote on the policy on Sept. 18.
ECG Screening for Athletics
