Rafe Maccarone and I grew up in a small Florida beach town. He was my soccer teammate at Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School. One day, as we were warming up for practice, my teammates and I watched Rafe take a knee and fall on his back.
A teammate of ours started CPR. Our coach joined in, and other teammates searched for an automated external defibrillator nearby. Unfortunately, it was too late.
Rafe died in the hospital the next day.
It’s been 16 years since my friend died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition that makes it harder and harder over time for the heart to pump blood. Early detection could have saved his life. Even today, there’s much more we can do to safeguard youth and young adults and prevent them from suffering serious heart conditions.
For 80% of student athletes, sudden cardiac arrest is the first indication of an underlying heart condition. Had Rafe’s heart condition been detected prior to his cardiovascular episode on Nov. 30, 2007, there is a 95% chance he would be with us today.
Rafe is the genesis of Who We Play For, the nonprofit organization I serve as executive director. For more than 10 years now, his family and friends have joined forces to prevent what happened to him from happening to other young people.
Who We Play For travels across Florida each week, setting up mobile electrocardiogram screening events. With a simple, five-to-10-minute test, we can identify previously unnoticed heart conditions that may be a serious threat to a young person’s life. Identifying these signs before students participate in high-intensity sports can prevent what happened to my friend Rafe.
Since 2014, we have screened more than 250,000 students, ages 10 to 22, at a low cost or at no cost for families who cannot afford to pay for it. We notify families when abnormalities are detected so that they can seek further care from a specialized health care provider.
This effort would not be possible without the generous support of our partners. Florida State University’s entrepreneurship program was the flint that sparked the flame of Who We Play For, and the program has continued to support the movement along the way. Other organizations have contributed financial resources to bring screenings to more students across Florida. Simply Healthcare recently committed $100,000 to expand the program, extending heart screenings and protecting the lives of Florida’s youth.
Who We Play For is now the largest heart-screening nonprofit in the United States, having documented saving the lives of more than 250 kids with heart conditions and expanding our reach to more than 500 schools across the nation.
And we are continuing to expand our work through our partners — from Simply Healthcare and the Florida Legislature to the Florida High School Athletic Association, school boards and school districts and many more. In partnership with these stakeholders, we’ve implemented a proactive approach to promote healthy hearts and save lives.
By raising awareness about the risks of cardiac issues among youth athletes, Who We Play For is empowering individuals and communities to act. Fellow student athletes, coaches and parents are most often on the front line of cardiac emergencies, and we are committed to creating a culture of vigilance and providing the tools necessary to help them respond quickly to a sudden cardiac episode.
Florida was the first state in the country to require CPR training two times as a high school graduation requirement. We are grateful for the support of Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida legislators for helping to make this a reality.
Evan Ernst is the executive director of Who We Play For, one of the largest nonprofits of its kind in the world, which focuses solely on the prevention of sudden cardiac death in the young. He is a graduate of Florida State University and the University of Pennsylvania.